


stories are told

by Areiton



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Peter Hale, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Dubious Consent, Feral Behavior, Full Shift Werewolves, Implied/Referenced Cheating, M/M, Manipulative Relationship, Masturbation, Possessive Behavior, Torture, Underage Sex, Unhealthy Relationships, implied Stiles Stilinski/Allison Argent, legends and stories, mentioned genocide, mentioned war and violence, stiles is a sneaky bastard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-24 10:35:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 31
Words: 21,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16173335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Areiton/pseuds/Areiton
Summary: They say that once, Beacon Hills belonged to a family of wolves, old and honorable and strong.They say that once, it's people walked in knowledge that they were safe and protected by the woods and the creatures that lived there.Once--once there was no need to fear the gathering dusk, no need for mother's to gather their children and tug them indoors, away from the monsters in the night.Once, Beacon Hills was safe and happy and protected.Or maybe that is just another story they tell.





	1. Poisonous

**Author's Note:**

> So I woke up this morning and decided, Hey, Arei, we should write a continuing story with each (daily) update being the prompt for inktober.  
> And because I have like, three WIPs and a novel I'm supposed to be starting today, I agreed with myself and here we are.  
> Disclaimer: I know nothing about where these two are taking this story. I'm not plotting. I'm literally just writing the daily drabble in the morning and tossing it at y'all. Enjoy. 
> 
> Note on the world: Werewolves are known, but have been hunted almost to extinction.

There are stories told about the forest. Stories about monsters that creep in the woods, eyes shining like demons. Stories of creatures whose teeth are sharp and rending and poisonous, whose claws rip and pull and kill. 

There are stories told, too, about Beacon Hills. A tiny hellmouth town with a reputation far bigger than it's size warranted. Stories of happiness ruined, death and fire, of ruin and loss. 

They say that once, Beacon Hills belonged to a family of wolves, old and honorable and strong. 

They say that once, it's people walked in knowledge that they were safe and protected by the woods and the creatures that lived there. 

Once--once there was no need to fear the gathering dusk, no need for mother's to gather their children and tug them indoors, away from the monsters in the night. 

Once, Beacon Hills was safe and happy and protected. 

Or maybe that is just another story they tell. 

There is a boy, in Beacon Hills. A pale boy with lonely eyes and a quick smile and a impossibly big heart and something cold about him that sets him apart. Marks him strange and different. 

They whisper about him, sometimes, about how sad it was, a nice boy like him, growing up without a mother. They say he looks like her, and that he does look thin. They say his father tries his best, in that tone that says its not nearly enough, whisper all their petty poisonous words and stories everything they think they  _ know _ \--he hears them and ignore their whispers because Beacon Hills has its own stories and he has learned, most stories aren't actually  _ true.  _

This  then is the story that is true: there is a boy, lonely and fierce and older than his years. 

And there is a town, a tiny village with more history than future and more legend than truth, more tragedy than joy. 

And there is a creature, living in the woods, who loves the boy and the village. 

 

~*~

 

“In a tiny town there is a lonely boy who goes into the dark wood and, there is a creature, large and black with demon red eyes and teeth that are sharp and rending and claws that could so easily rip and tear,” Stiles recites, picking his way into the forest and a black shadow looms out of the darkness at him.

Stiles smiles at the beast, wide and bright and the creature snuffles him, licks his throat delightedly while rubbing against him, his giant body vibrating with excitement. Stiles giggles and tugs at the wolf's ear. 

There hasn't been a werewolf pack in California in sixty years. And yet, his wolf is draped over his legs, ears pricked as Stiles rambles about his day, red eyes half-lidded as he almost dozes. 

There are stories, whispered, about the Beast of Beacon Hills. About the dark wood and the dying streets and a pale boy without a mother, whose father has no time for him. 

The stories, though, are just that. Stories and legend and twisted guesses. 

This--this is the truth. 

There is a creature in the woods and he loves a pale boy and a quietly dying town. 

And his boy loves him. 

His boy loves him. 


	2. Tranquil

The woods are peaceful, tranquil, now. 

The wolf remembers a time when things weren't peaceful. 

He listens to his boy and sometimes he understands the words, hears snatches of a story that feels familiar. Most of the time, he only understands impressions.

He knows that some days his boy smells of salty tears and thick exhaustion and Wolf noses into him, rumbling and displeased. 

He knows that some days his boy smells like quiet contentment and Wolf likes those days, listens to his boy ramble his voice a soothing cadence that lures him to sleep. 

Some days his boy is quiet and sparks with temper, a sharp edged fury that makes Wolf snap and snarl, fighting his boy until he finally gives, submits, crashes boneless to the ground and lets Wolf drape over his back and mouth at his scruff. 

It’s peaceful. He finds it easy to relax, to doze in his boy’s presence. 

Sometimes, he remembers flashes of a time  _ before.  _ He remembers a family, sprawling and happy. He remembers a town, vibrant and alive, and children who called him by name. 

He doesn’t remember the name, not anymore. 

The days when memories chase him like the wolverine on the hill, snapping at his heels, not even his boy can calm his troubled thoughts. He whines and paces, gnaws on his paws and his boy hums, soft and soothing, until his eyes close and the memories fade. 

 

~*~

 

He pads along the deer path with his boy. He smells of happiness and salty ham, and Wolf liked it. He liked it best when Boy was loud and happy. 

They walk until the forest opens into a charred circle of empty land, a place that makes Wolf bare his teeth, makes him whine and snarl, press against Boy’s legs, to push him back. 

He doesn’t like this place. 

His boy says something, soothing and questioning, and Wolf whimpers. 

He loves his boy. And in moments like this, he wants to answer the question he doesn't understand, the question he knows Boy is asking. 

 

~*~

 

He knows this place. He knows it and he feels a pained whine in his throat as Boy wanders through it, his voice a warm concerned question. 

In moments like this, when his peace and tranquility is shattered and Boy’s hand in his ruff, tight and grounding, he remembers the other body. 

The other  _ him _ , and he wishes he could slip in that skin. He wishes he could wear other him, and answer Boy’s question, and hide his face in Boy’s throat and weep out the aching sorrow in his belly, the way Boy does to him, when the whispers of the tiny town get too loud, when he is too lonely, when grief clings too hard. 

He can’t. 

He sits next to his boy in a charred meadow and he remembers a family he loved, a lifetime ago, when the trees were still small and his sister bounded through the trees with him. 

~~Peter~~ closes his eyes against memories and leans into the hand of his Boy on his ruff, the crooning of his voice in his ear, and he howls, an eerie echoing thing of deep grief and immeasurable loss. 


	3. Roasted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild warning for violence and mentioned genocide.

The fan in the Sheriff's station turned slow, lazily moving hot air. The air conditioner broke in April and now, by mid-June everyone in the department had resigned themselves to feeling like they were being slow roasted for the duration of their shifts.

Stiles leans into the scant breeze coming from the open window and frowns at the book in his lap. “That's bullshit,” he mumbles.

A pointed throat clearing across the room makes the boy flush and flash a grin at his dad. His eyes narrow when he sees the way Dad is picking at his salad, flicking roasted pepper and cauliflower aside. “Eat that!” he insists and glares until his father begrudgingly does.

Then he turns back to his book.

“Do you know what the problem with history being written by the victors is?” he asks, absently and John Stilinski stills. Looks at his son with pained eyes.

“They lie.”

 

~*~

 

This is the history they teach in schools, the stories every child knows: the packs killed each other. In the Pack Wars, they fought for territory and power, and killed each other off.

Humans watched, wide eyed and terrified and did nothing to stop it and when it was over, the packs were shattered and ninety percent of the werewolf population was dead.

That is the story they tell.

This then, is the truth: werewolves were slaughtered.

They were hunted, like the witches before them, like dragons and gods, exterminated with a methodical brutality that makes Stiles shiver. They were slaughtered and when they fought back--the few that fought back--it was used to fuel the anti-were propaganda that led to genocide.

It was worst during World War II, when they were used as canon fodder for every army. The history books say that the packs died because they fought, alphaless after the war, and devastated themselves.

They don’t talk about the hunting parties that stormed pack lands with mountain ash and wolfsbane and skinned the terrified, shifted children.

They don’t talk about the way humans hunted them with a bloody savagery that was far more monstrous than any werewolf on a full moon.

The packs broke under the weight of human hate. There are, still, the rare family packs, three or four clustered together. There are the wandering omegas, the ones not driven insane without any pack bonds. But werewolves, once common among humans, were rare, as deeply hidden as the trolls in their mountains and the unicorns in the cold stretches of the north.

 

~*~

 

Stiles watches Wolf as he splashes into the river, snapping at a fish and giggles when he comes up panting and empty mouthed.

Wolf twists to growl at him, eyes flaring red and it makes the boy sad.

His wolf is a werewolf. With eyes that color red, he has to be a werewolf, an alpha--but he won’t shift.

There hasn’t been a pack in California since the Hales were driven out, in the fifties. But he’s heard of the Beast of Beacon Hills since he was a child, has heard his Wolf howling since he was a little boy in his mother’s lap.

The wolf trots up to him, eyes laughing and flops, soaking wet, across Stiles’ and the boy splutters, laughing, squirming away as the wolf’s bulk pins him. Teeth, large and white, rest near his throat, nip soft at his skin, before the wolf relaxes, and Stiles sighs. He thinks of his book, an heirloom handwritten account from his grandfather in Poland, of the history that children are taught that is all a lie, and the packless land outside his little town that has always had a werewolf living there.

“I wish you would tell me your story, big guy,” Stiles murmurs, and the wolf’s ears flicker, as he sighs and settles deeper on his boy.


	4. Spell

The Boy leaves. 

It is the single worst thing about his Boy, the only thing Wolf dislikes about him. 

He leaves, slips away from Wolf and the forest and back into the streets that Wolf watches with uneasy suspicion. 

He wants his boy in the deep dark wood with him, where the ground is cool and familiar under his paws, and the air is only disturbed by the rabbits he hunts, and the hush feels like a spell, worked over him and the land. 

He remembers spellwork, sometimes, a flash of knowledge, that comes and goes, and it should bother him, the same way his boy’s leaving does--but memories are fleet and fickle. 

This is what he knows: his forest, deep and safe and lonely. His boy, bright shining and irresistible. And a village, wrapped in stone and treeless, that tugs at him. 

He knows the cold of winter, and the hot taste of blood in his mouth, and the ache of his legs, after he runs. 

He knows the moon, bright and comforting in the sky. 

~~ Some days he knows more, and he aches with it, with  _ knowing _ .  ~~

He hears his boy, wistful and sad over a thick book that smells old, like blood and love, like loss. The wolf noses it, and listens to his boy, his voice a slow steady thing, rising and falling as he speaks. 

The wolf listens, and sometimes--he remembers. 

 

~*~

 

He follows his boy to the edge of the forest, and licks his hand when he hesitates. Whines a little, distressed.  _ Come back, come back, stay _ . Beyond the trees, the world feels wide and open and his boy unprotected and it itches at him, this burning need to tug him back, back, back into the dark, tuck him safe in Wolf's den and curl around him, guard him against the dangers. 

This is what he knows: once, hands shaped like his boy's hurt him. 

They ripped and tore and left him like this, and lonely. 

And in all the time since, he's never wanted a touch in those shapes. 

And then a boy slipped, wide eyed and heart pounding, into his woods, and he crept after, drawn by a scent he couldn't place and couldn't shake, and since the first time his Boy slid shaking fingers through his fur--he's craved that gentle touch. 

It feels, sometimes, like a spell. 

 

~*~

 

The Boy leaves, and the Wolf--

He is used to being alone, the only wolf in the wild stretch of woods that wrap around a dying town. 

But he as he wanders through them now, his tail drooping, he is lonely. A whine builds in his throat, and he longs for his Boy. 

He walks, whimpering softly, until he reaches the grove, and the moon shines through the limbs above the trees. It feels, in this moment before he climbs, that he is impossibly far away, miles and miles from his boy. 

And then he's climbing, and he makes a restless circle on the stump, twice, three times, before he noses it and settles down, the wood smooth and familiar under his fur. He rests his muzzle on his paws and closes his eyes, and he can hear it. 

His boy's heartbeat. 

He sleeps, the ache in his belly gone, as he listens to the steady soothing rhythm. 

 

~*~

 

He wakes as the moon is dipping toward the horizon, howling in fear and fury, terror burning through him, and his Boy's heartbeat wild in his ears. 

 


	5. Chicken

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said I don't know where this is going?  
> I did not see this coming. I am so sorry.

Stiles stares at his plate. He thinks, if he stares long enough, maybe the people around him will disappear. 

He wants everyone to disappear. If they disappear, maybe he can. 

“Stiles, honey, do you want some chicken?” 

He watched his plate disappear and rubbery chicken replaces it in an oozing cream sauce that makes his stomach churn. 

Melissa retreats, and Scott presses a little heavier against his side and Stiles closes his eyes. 

This feels familiar and foreign at the same time. He doesn't have to  _ listen _ to know what they're saying. 

_ That poor boy.  _

_ It's so tragic.  _

_ What will happen to him now?  _

_ Can you imagine? First his mother and now this.  _

_ He was such a good man.  _

_ That poor boy.  _

 

~*~

 

Later, it will become one of the stories murmured in and around Beacon Hills. The good sheriff dying to protect a helpless mother, a band of children. 

Later, it will grow into a legend he doesn't know or recognize. 

He clings to his plate of rubbery chicken and repeats the words, like a mantra. 

_ My father's name is John. He is the sheriff and a good man, but not a very good father. He died, shot in a liquor store robbery.  _

And there is this, the secret he will tell no one, ever. 

_ It's my fault he was there.  _

 

~*~

 

When the house is empty and quiet and Scott snores on the floor and Melissa sleeps on the couch--Stiles creeps from his bed, down the hall in the dark to climb into his father's bed and curls there, crying silently in the dark. 

 

~*~

 

They bury the Sheriff on a Sunday, while the sun shines and birds sing and a lonely boy stands before his parents graves and people whisper behind. 

When the words have all been spoken and the mourners and spectators leave, he sits in the dirt and grass and watches a blonde boy lower his father into the ground and wonders what will become of him now. 

 

~*~

 

A well meaning widow serves him cold chicken at the wake and Stiles thinks he will never eat chicken again. 

 

~*~

 

Melissa and Scott move into the Stilinski house for now. The one time she makes noises about going to her home, Stiles goes quiet and nonverbal for two days. He wakes panting in terror most nights and barely eats. 

When he wakes from his nightmares, he misses his Dad the most, misses the steady restraining strength of him wrapped around Stiles as the boy screams. 

But--in the dark. 

He can hear a wolf howling. 

A lonely cry that is never answered. 

 

~*~

 

Stiles slips away a week after that horrible night when a steady knock pulled him from his dreams and shattered the remains of his childhood. 

He slips, ghostlike and silent into the woods and Wolf slinks out of the shadows, pressing against him as Stiles trips over a branch and crashes to his knees. It hurts and his sobs, a hiccupping noise in the dark that he presses into Wolf's fur. 

He falls asleep there, sobs himself to exhaustion and lets Wof nudge him until he curls on his side and sleeps, the giant black wolf a steady weight at his back, head balanced on Stiles’ shoulder, guarding him from the night. 


	6. Drooling

Boy is drooling, small puppy noises caught in his throat, limbs twitching restlessly. Wolf regards him in the quiet. 

They're deep in the forest, deeper than Boy normally goes. Every time he wakes, he stumbles further in, fleeing almost mindlessly. 

Almost. 

He sees the look in his boy's eyes. The stubborn set of his jaw and the furious grief in his eyes, and he knows Boy is running. 

He doesn't mind. He understands the  _ losslonelygriefrage _ that clings to his boy, knows it because it has clung to him for so long now. 

There is this, too: his Boy stays. 

He wakes, and Boy is there, sleeps wrapped around him. 

When Boy is hungry, Wolf brings him rabbits and leads him to bushes ripe with berries, watching with sharp eyes as his boy eats. 

When he’s thirsty, Wolf nudges him toward the cool river, and anytime he hears the voices calling--they can’t even howl proper--for his boy, he leads him deeper into the woods, protective at the Boy’s heels. 

He’s quiet, now. He sits still and silent, tears dripping down his face, splashing into Wolf’s fur. 

He remembers this grief. 

In a world that revolves around the rise and set of the sun, the path deer take in the preserve, the rabbit quick heartbeat of a boy he wants to keep--Wolf remembers grief. 

 

~*~

 

There are people shouting in the forest again. 

It drifts to him, closer to his den then they have ever been, and it stirs him from his sleep.

_ Peter  _

_ “Stiles!”  _

_ Peter, please _

_ “Stiiiiiiiles!”  _

_ Peter!  _

He wakes, snarling, and his boy stares at him, wide eyed and shaking. 

Talia always said his snarl was terrifying. 

_ Talia. _

The wolf freezes, and shudders. There is something--some _ one _ drifting in his mind, a sharp clever  _ other  _ and Wolf snarls at it, teeth bared. 

_ Now now, I’m just here to help.  _

Wolf stares beyond the den. 

_ They’ll keep looking. Until they find him, they’ll keep looking.  _

Wolf wants to tear the voice to pieces, wants to lay the thwarted threat bloody at Boy’s feet. 

_ I’m not a threat, you idiotic puppy. Let me protect him. Let me help  _ you  _ protect him.  _

From far away and far too close, the shouting grows louder. 

_ Let me help him the way no one helped us. _

The voice is a whisper and he wants to claw it out, wants to run until the wind drowns it, and--he can’t. Because the boy is sleeping in a pile of leaves and dirty furs. 

He smells, of dirt and refuse, of grief and exhaustion, a hint of blood that always sharpens when Wolf strays from his side for too long. 

He hasn’t spoken since he stumbled into the woods. 

He only screams, when he’s jerking awake, shaking and crying, snot and drool rubbed into Wolf’s fur. 

_ We can’t stay like this, _ the voice murmurs, soft and knowing.  _ Not when he needs us. _

Wolf shakes himself and stands. Sniffs his boy twice and licks over his delicate ankle, where brambles caught it and ripped the thin skin. He whines, longing shuddering through him. 

He wants to stay. 

He wants to hide in his den, with his boy, where it is safe and simple. Where nothing can hurt either of them--because he would never allow something to hurt them. 

_ We can’t. Come now, Wolf. He needs us. And we have hidden for quite long enough.  _

He snarls at that, because he does not  _ hide. _

The boy doesn’t stir, as Wolf trots out of den, slipping silently through the forest. He lets his eyes shift, and growls a few time, chasing off townspeople searching for his boy and that dry voice laughs, echoing in his head. 

It’s dusk, when Wolf slinks out of the preserve, and into Beacon Hills. 

 

~*~

 

Later, people will whisper. 

They’ll tell stories about the day he came to town. About what drew him  to their tiny dying village. 

Later, they would talk. 

But that day--the day he stumbles into the Sheriff station, the day voices ring through the town and through the preserve, calling for a lost, lonely boy--no one noticed. 

No one cared about a man with wild eyes and a feral smile that no one had ever seen before. 

No one cared, and no one watched him, and that--that suited Wolf just fine. 

He frowned as he rubbed at an unfamiliar jaw, and memories teased him, and then he spoke, and his voice sounded like the  _ other _ in his head. “Well, now, Wolf. Let’s get our Boy, shall we?” 


	7. Exhausted

There is a part of him--a large part, even--that realizes what he’s doing is dangerous and self-destructive. 

That  _ knows _ he can’t stay in the preserve, living with a goddamn alpha werewolf stuck in it’s wolf skin. 

But then--there is a part of him that is furious and grief mad that wants to demand,  _ why the fuck not?  _ There’s nothing left for him beyond the preserve, just a dying town full of people who thought they knew more than they did, an empty house he didn’t get to keep, and two looming tombstones. 

Maybe there was even less than that in the preserve, but he was comfortable here, with his Wolf pressed to his side, and watching him eat. 

And there was too--he was exhausted. 

He didn’t want to think about going back to Beacon Hills and the endless well-wishers and sympathetic stares, the bounce from house to house. 

He didn’t want to deal with the final wishes and debt ridden estate or the thousand of other things that there is no one else to do. 

He grew up fast, after Claudia died. That's what he heard, whispered in Beacon Hills, where whispers were never as quiet as the people whispering seemed to think. 

He grew up fast, and now--now he's a boy all alone and he wants to scream that he isn't ready, that he can't be alone, that he needs them, needs his parents--but screaming does no good. 

The dead are dead and there is no coming back from that. 

He thinks--he could stay here, in this den with his quiet wolf, and the town would forget him. 

People die, in Beacon Hills. They die and they disappear. 

He could too. 

 

~*~

 

There is a story told, in Beacon Hills. 

A family of werewolves lived in the preserve.  

A family of werewolves lived in the preserve, and they were terrifying, as beautiful as they were deadly, as remote as the moon that tugged on them. They followed a she-wolf with blood red eyes and a thick black coat, and at her side ran a gray wolf, sleek and deadly, gleaming blue eyes watching for threats. 

A family of werewolves lived in the preserve, and they knew magic, and held the village in their thrall. 

Until a well meaning family of hunters moved to Beacon Hills, and seeing the terror and growing number of dead bodies, they offered their services, and drove the werewolves out. It's been over sixty years, and that is the story told. 

But it doesn't explain--why are the Argents so revered, if children still vanish, if bodies are still found in the preserve, if the town is dying? 

Why are they revered, when the Beast of Beacon Hills haunts the preserve and none can be bothered to hunt it down?

Why do the stories that are told never match the truth--because Stiles has seen the Beast, and kindness in his bright red eyes. 

 

~*~

 

He stays in the den. 

Days pass, but Wolf does not return, and he picks away at the berries and rabbit left for him, and waits. He is too exhausted to do anything else, and if there is one thing he is sure of, it is that his Wolf would never desert him. 

He waits. Sometimes, he can hear shouts, search parties calling his name. Once he hears the familiar voice of Gerard Argent as he tramps by, close enough to the den that Stiles shakes in fear, grumbling to his daughter as they along down the hill, never bothering to look up at the fallen trees and carefully piled stones where Stiles is quietly hidden. 

Eventually, the rabbit runs out and he lays in the dirty leaves and remains of Wolf's den and thinks--maybe he was wrong. 

Maybe the devotion he saw in Wolf's eyes was another lie, a story he told himself so he wouldn't feel alone. 

Maybe he will die here, in this cairn built by a creature he should be terrified of. 

He closes his eyes as the moon rises, and lets the endless waves of exhaustion take him where questions don't plague him. 

 

~*~

 

"Boy," a smooth voice murmurs, and he shivers, shifting into familiar warmth. 

"Boy, wake up now." 

Fingers drift through his hair, and he blinks, staring up into a stranger's face and familiar red eyes. His heart trips, trembling into a new rhythm and his voice is scratchy and unused when he rasps, " _ Wolf _ ?" 

His wolf smiles, and it's soft and comforting and he is  _ beautiful _ . "Hello, Stiles." 


	8. Star

The streets of Beacon Hills are quiet, almost deserted, when he leads Boy out of the preserve.

Dawn is coming, the last star fading in the rising sun, and it itches at Wolf, makes him want to turn back. He snarls, and _Other_ says, voice sharp, “Stop. He needs this.”

That makes Wolf pause.

Because his Boy--he whines and it makes Other sigh, scent tinged with relief as he herds the boy down the quiet streets and up to a dark, cold house.

Boy stumbles into the house almost by rote, and Wolf can smell him here, the thick scent of Boy and a million emotions, and a stranger whose scent is thick and stale and mixed with something sharp and bitter in his nose.

Peter touches an empty bottle with one finger, pulls away sticky, and huffs, angrily.

Wolf rumbles, displeased and the man huffs. “You don’t have to like me, puppy. You just have to know I’m doing this for Stiles. I want what you want.”

_Boysafepackminekeep._

“Yes, you _do_ understand. Take a nap and let me take care of him.”

Wolf grumbles, a little, but subsides, lets the Other Called Peter take control.

 

~*~

 

Being human again is...strange. There is a part of him that wants to focus on that, that wants to pick apart everything that happened in the time he spent in his wolfskin.

That wants to hunt down those who slaughtered his family. He _wants_.

And there is too this--he wants to gather his boy, slip his human skin and run.

Peter takes a deep breath and pushes that desire down--as alluring as it sounds, his boy doesn’t need to live feral in the woods.

“Boy,” he murmurs, as he slips into the dark living room. He’s curled on the couch, wrapped up in a smelly jacket that dwarfs his narrow shoulders. In the pre-dawn light, he’s pale and beautiful, his eyes shining, wet gleaming stars in the dark.

He still hasn’t spoken, nothing more than that one shakey word in the den before he threw himself into Peter’s arms, exhausted and trusting in a way that stole Wolf’s breath.

He sits next to his boy now, and pulls him against his side, tucks him there and holds him as the sun rises.

“I’m not going away, sweet boy,” he murmurs. “I’m here. I have you.” Tears wet his tshirt and he whispers, “I’ll always have you.”

 

~*~

 

Beacon Hills woke to the news and by lunch the town was awash in rumor and whispers.

They said Stiles walked out of the forest with his hand buried in a wolf’s fur.

They said he walked out of the Preserve holding the hand of a man no one had ever seen.

They said he wasn’t speaking.

They said his new guardian would take advantage of him, that poor boy.

This then is the truth as it was told to Melissa McCall when she surrendered her best friend’s son to the authorities: A distant brother of the Sheriff’s dear wife had returned in the wake of his brother in law’s death.

He would take up residence in Beacon Hills, and Stiles would live with him. He was worried about his young nephew, and all too happy to help.

“You don’t have to go with him,” Melissa murmurs.

“It’s only until he’s sixteen--two years and he can be emancipated,” Melissa demands.

“John would hate this,” Melissa worries.

It doesn’t matter--what she says doesn’t matter.

Stiles sits quiet, and at the end of the interminable week of meetings and papers and hasty courtroom appearances, Stiles returns to his childhood home.

The town murmurs and whispers, and the only thing they ever get right is this:

“His uncle’s name is Peter.”

 

~*~

 

At night, hidden behind thick walls and curtained windows, Peter slips into his wolf skin, and curls next to his boy, his big head braced on the boy’s shoulder as Stiles sleeps, and Peter watches the stars and waits for dawn.

Wolf thinks his boy is injured, the kind of deep, fatal injury that would kill him in the wild..

He was injured like that once.

He thinks maybe he still is.

Maybe they’re injured, but they’re injured together, and together, maybe they’re almost whole.


	9. Precious

The weeks after the funeral and Stiles disappearance, after his estranged uncle sweeps into town and claims him with a flurry of paperwork and thoroughness that left even the new interim sheriff reeling are remarkably quiet. 

Stiles and his new guardian retreat to the Stilinski home, and rarely emerge and the town is left to whisper and wonder in the way that towns so often do. 

Inside a quiet house, sits a lonely boy and a silent man. 

Stiles watches him--not Wolf,  _ Peter.  _ He knows his wolf.  Knows the tilt of his head and the curl if his lips, knows what it means when Wolf is quiet and watchful. He knows what it means when he is playful  and teasing, when the growl in his throat rough with warning and gentle with annoyed affection. 

He  _ knows  _ his wolf. 

He doesn’t know Peter. 

And he doesn’t trust what he doesn’t know. 

 

~*~

 

Peter sleeps a lot. 

He feeds them both, and watches eyes that glint red and familiar, when Stiles can catch him right--but he doesn’t offer explanations and he doesn’t ask Stiles to talk. Instead he locks the house up tight, and watches Stiles until he can’t keep his eyes open any longer, and then dozes, wrapped up in Stiles blanket, twitching like he isn’t sure Stiles will still be there when he opens his eyes. 

 

~*~

 

Sometimes, Peter will pause, in the midst of doing something innocuous--once he freezes while cooking, and Stiles has to nudge him aside to stop the eggs from burning. 

Stiles thinks, he’s not good at this. He’s good at taking care of  _ Stiles. _ But he’s no good at being human. Stiles wonders how long it’s been since, he was--since he left the preserve and stood as a man. 

It’s been over fifty years, since the Argents drove the wolves from Beacon Hills--and yet his wolf is here, and  he doesn’t know what to make of that. 

 

~*~

 

Stiles doesn’t talk. 

And for those first few precious weeks--neither did Peter. Melissa would appear, on occasion, with food and sharply assessing eyes, and  _ question _ that Stiles ignored. 

He didn’t want to explain an uncle no one had ever heard of. He didn’t want to explain a werewolf that was strangely gentle and far too possessive. He didn’t want to explain anything, didn’t want to hear useless platitudes about the  _ goodness _ of his father. 

He wants silence, and Peter--Peter gives him that. 

He doesn’t know or trust Peter, but he gives him those precious few weeks when he is drowning in grief and Wolf presses against him when Stiles wakes screaming from nightmares, and he thinks that he  _ could _ trust Peter, if only for that. 

 

~*~

 

It’s been over a month, when Stiles stumbles downstairs and finds Peter at the table. 

He’s dressed, in a pair of fitted denim jeans and a grey v neck, his beard shaved away to a neatly trimmed goatee and he’s frowning at his coffee, like it’s poison or holds the mysteries of the universe. 

Sharp eyes follow him as Stiles makes a glass of juice, before he rises and makes toast for Stiles, watching carefully as Stiles eats. 

When the first slice is gone, he nods in satisfaction. “Get dressed,” he says, his voice raspy and unfamiliar still and Stiles blinks, questioningly at him. Peter smiles, and it’s the first time Stiles has seen Wolf in the other man’s expression, feral and dangerous. “It’s time for me to go home.” 


	10. Flowing

Being human is...strange. 

And painful. 

For those first few days, when he was consumed with claiming Stiles, with manipulating every idiot he had to, he could push it aside, the strangeness. 

And when Boy is sobbing, reeking of grief and pain--it is easy then, to put it aside and take care of his pack. 

But as the weeks wear on and they settle into a new rhythm together--the strangeness of it settles too. 

And the memories. 

Wolf didn't remember. 

Wolf cared only for the hunt and the safety of his den and the laughter of his Boy. Peter understands, why he let Wolf forget, why be didn't fight for control. 

He remembers and he wishes he could forget. 

 

~*~

 

Stiles is still refusing to talk, and Peter is content to let him keep his silence. Grief is a strange and complex thing, and he has sent decades lost in his--Stiles persistant silence doesn’t bother him. 

Melissa McCall doesn’t trust him, not his intentions, not his false story, not the way he cares for his Boy. It rankles, and he would happily tear her throat out--except that Stiles smells almost happy when she stops by, not so much that it overpowers the grief or brings back his voice--but more than he normally is. 

She annoys Peter, has the potential to ruin everything, and she makes his Boy happy. 

He doesn’t kill her. 

 

~*~

 

Stiles tugs at his sleeve as they walk toward the preserve, and Peter looks down at him, wide eyed and questioning, and he smiles. “Do you know the stories of this town, sweet boy?” 

Stiles blinks at him, and Peter lets his eyes bleed red, “Do you know the truth of the werewolves?” He steps deeper into the preserve, and murmurs, “Let me show you.” 

 

~*~

 

There is a story, told in Beacon Hills. About a family that kept them safe. 

There is a story told about a family of wolves, that fled in fear and terror. 

There is a story told, about the monster who remained, with bloody hands and crimson eyes, and a taste for young children and terror. 

These are the stories, told in Beacon Hills, by Argents and children, by cleric and criminal, by saint and sinner. 

These are the lies they told--

This--

This then, is the truth. 

 

~*~

 

There was a family. A female named Talia, and called sister, friend,  _ alpha.  _ A male named Peter, called brother, asshole,  _ left hand.  _

And they were happy. There were mates, and pack, children, a  _ life,  _ rich and full, and blessed. 

They were happy and strong, and they protected Beacon Hills. 

And then Kate Argent slipped into Derek’s bed and into their pack and they were slaughtered. Burned to the ground, and as the pack died, the power in the preserve, the power the pack kept grounded and anchored and  _ safe-- _ changed. 

There was a family, and they were happy, and they were killed. 

And the town they loved has been dying ever since. 

 

~*~

 

There is this, too: 

One of them survived. 

Peter dragged himself, burnt and almost dying, to the heart of their territory, buoyed by the alpha spark he didn’t  _ want _ , and the magic there, deep in their preserve, in the shadow of an ancient tree--he made a bargain. 

He lived. 

He changed, slipped into his wolfskin and for fifty years, he never dreamt of turning. Humans killed his family and he wanted nothing to do with them. He kept the magic anchored, not well, not the way a pack could--but he stood as guardian, and in return, the nemeton kept him alive and young and he  _ forgot _ , and he was content. 

And then a Boy, pale and lonely, stumbled into his forest, and changed everything. 

 

~*~

 

“We lived here,” Peter says. There’s nothing here, now--the ground where the old Hale manor once sat is a wide empty meadow, overgrown grass and aconite, and Peter can feel his fangs itching in his gums. He hasn’t been home in decades, and he thinks maybe Wolf knew more than he let on. 

_ Maybe  _ not _ an idiotic puppy, _ he murmurs, and Peter huffs. 

Stiles slips his hand in the Wolf’s and in the distance, he can hear the river flowing. The river where he would catch fish and his boy would laugh, and they were happy. 

He wishes, absurdly, to go back to that time, when his boy was happy and he knew nothing more than what was in front of him. 

“It was a big house, and Talia filled it up with my nieces and nephews. We were so happy, sweetheart.” 

Stiles hand tightened on his and he sighs. Pushes the memories down and leads him through the meadow. 

There is a boulder, and he rubs his fingers over it, quietly contemplative, and then lets his claws snick out. Stiles peers at them, curiously, but there’s no fear in his boy’s scent, and Peter almost preens when he realizes that. 

The ground rumbles a little, as the vault opens, and Peter tugs Stiles closer, protectively. 

“Come on,” he murmurs, when the stairs open. 

“What is it?” Stiles asks, softly and rusty and he closes his eyes. 

He has  _ missed _ his boy’s voice, flowing in and out of their lives. He’s missed the rise and fall of it in irritation and amusement, a steady presence. 

“It’s our history, sweetheart. It’s the Hale pack history.” He squeezes Stiles hand and hopes that Stiles understands. He’s clever, his Boy. He will. “It’s your pack history.” 


	11. Cruel

Peter reads to him. Sometimes. Sometimes, he just sits and talks, and Stiles hears it all, the whole long story of the Hales. 

It’s heartbreaking and he thinks, the world is a very cruel place. 

 

~*~

 

They go to the vault every day for a week, until Peter has exhausted himself and his voice, telling stories about a family long dead, and the people who killed them. Stiles sits across from him for most of it, but once, Peter’s voice breaks, and he scoots across the dirty ground and presses into his Wolf’s side, and it makes the wolf’s breath catch. When he speaks, again, it’s even and steady and Stiles stays there, the rest of the day. 

The next afternoon, when they settle in the vault, and Peter picks up the Hales’ history, he drops into place next to Peter life he belongs there. 

He’s beginning to think he does. 

 

~*~

 

Peter sleeps in his room. Neither have ventured into John’s room since they returned from the woods, and Stiles wonders, idly, laying in bed curled next to Wolf, if it’s healthy living in a house of ghosts. 

Probably no more healthy than living in the woods for fifty years, Stiles muses. 

But he thinks--maybe they’re broken. Maybe Peter is a better wolf than he is a man, and maybe Stiles is more alone than any boy should ever be. But he thinks too, that they could be pack. 

They could be whole, or closer to it than they are now, he thinks. 

He closes his eyes and presses into Peter’s thick fur and tries to still the trembling fear in his belly. 

 

~*~

 

“Toast or eggs?” Peter asks, when Stiles stumbles down the next morning. He asks, every morning. He never demands an answer, reads the answer in Stiles expression--but he always asks. 

“Eggs,” Stiles asks, and Peter has the barest hitch, a hiccup in movement that Stiles notices only because he’s looking for it. Then he’s nodding and cracking eggs, and Stiles pours their coffee, measuring out sugar and cream for Peter carefully before sliding it across the counter to him. 

They eat silently, and then Peter looks at him, patient and expectant, and Stiles takes a deep breath, licking his lips. 

“Why did you Shift?” 

Peter cocks his head. “Because you needed Peter, not Wolf.” 

“I need both,” Stiles says, immediately, and Peter’s eyes glitter red for a moment. 

“I know you do,” he says. 

“Will you leave?” 

“Never,” Peter swears, and his voice rings with power and sincerity. 

Stiles watches him for a long time, and then he nods. “Then we need to do something different.” 

Peter smiles, wide and sharp, his eyes bright as he watches and Stiles thinks--the world has been cruel to them. 

But they have each other, and the world’s cruelty can’t take that away. 

He smiles. 

 

~*~

 

It’s two months after they buried the Sheriff when the school year begins and Stiles hugs Peter before he lets Melissa drive him and Scott back to school. 

He’s still quiet, quieter than he was before the Sheriff was killed, but he answers when Scott asks him questions, and murmurs a goodbye when he slides out of her car. 

The high school looms before him, and he knows--he know there will be whispers. 

He takes a deep breath, and goes inside. 

 

~*~

 

Whispers follow him through the day. There are many stories that come out of that first day of his sophomore year, and very few are true. Some are kind. Most are cruel.

They say he cried in the boys bathroom, and punched Jackson in gym, and cussed out Harris in Chemistry. They say Erica Reyes hugged him and Lydia Martin paused and watched him drift by. They say he came back tattooed and smoking and  _ different.  _

They say he spent lunch outside, sitting next to a savage looking black dog. 

But there is one story, one that is told in and out of the school, that day and for weeks, after. 

The story of a pale lonely boy with a dead father and mother, who walked up to Allison Argent, the pretty, dimpled only daughter of town leaders, untouched royalty, and--smiled. 


	12. Whale

It takes less than a month for Peter to lose patience with the housing market in Beacon Hills. Stiles expected it to be a week, so he thinks it means Wolf is learning, and he counts it as a win.

Any progress for either of them is a win, he thinks.

The house, Peter decides--the house they’ll live in will butt up to the Preserve. He works protections and defenses into it, and sometimes, when Stiles curls sleepily against him and listens to him talk about it, he can feel the grief for his dead family, the fear that he won’t be able to protect Stiles.

Stiles doesn’t say anything about the house, just waves off Peter’s questions impatiently. “Do you think a werewolf could kill a a killer whale?”

Peter cocks his head, paint forgotten for a moment. “Why on earth would I want to?”

“It’s a hypothetical, Peter,” Stiles says, primly. “Like--who’d win in Batman vs Superman. And _don’t_ bring up that shitty movie.”

Peter closes his mouth and frowns at his boy. “Maybe, sweetheart, we can focus on real hypotheticals--like would you be happier with blue or gray paint.”

Stiles sighs, and rolls his head on Peter’s shoulder.

He isn’t sure when Stiles stopped hesitating to touch him when he’s human. When he became comfortable in Peter’s space, when the distrust in Stiles’ gaze warmed into acceptance.

He only knows he’s glad it did.

 

~*~

 

He hates the hours when Stiles leaves, when he goes to school and comes home smelling of strangers, and the Argent girl he insists on befriending.

Stiles says be patient, and he _knows_ that this is a long game. But there is too, the urge to follow his boy. To chase him when he goes beyond the bounds Peter is allowed. There is fear, deep and burning that Stiles won’t come back.

He lost his pack once, and it almost killed him--should have, if Peter is honest with himself.

He thinks losing Stiles, his precious boy, would drive him mad, and he wonders what he would do to Beacon Hills, if they took him.

It would be so simple, to become the beast they whisper of and fear, and Stiles returning to him in the afternoons, a tired smile and scent thick with strangers--that is all the keeps the beast at bay.

 

~*~

 

“Do you think it’s weird?”

“What?” Peter mumbles, sleepily. It’s late and he should shift, but Stiles had wanted Peter and Wolf had snarled over it, but Peter was helpless to deny his boy anything.

“Us,” Stiles says, simply, and it jerks Peter awake with an almost brutal suddenness.

“Do you, sweet boy?” Peter asks, curiously and Stiles bites his lip.

He has very pretty lips.

“Sometimes,” he says. “But I think it’s--it’s supposed to be weird, and the weird part is that it’s not?”

Peter nods, and waits, because his boy is slow with his words, when they matter. When he has something serious to say, he’s quiet and careful and deliberate.

“I don’t want people to judge us because of what we are.”

“What are we?” Peter asks, and Stiles goes still against him.

Rolls into the wolf, pale and beautiful in the dark room. In the low light of Stiles’ desk lamp he looks golden instead of silver, and it makes Peter’s breath catch.

“Something,” Stiles murmurs, so close Peter can almost taste the words.

Then he giggles, a low, breathy noise, before he ducks and presses himself to Peter’s throat.

Peter holds him, helpless to do anything but hold him. “We decide what we are,” Peter murmurs. “Just us.”

Stiles hums, consideringly, against him and falls asleep there.

 

~*~

 

Stiles is drunk, when he tries to kiss Peter, three days later. Drunk when he shoves his way into Peter’s lap, all clumsy want and big pleading eyes that go wet and hurt when Peter gently sets him aside.

“Darling,” Peter murmurs, “no. No.”

“You love me,” Stiles insists, and Peter sighs. “I want you.”

“I do. But not yet. You are too young, sweetheart.”

Stiles’ scent goes bitter and hurt, and he scrambles away from Peter.

It’s the first time, Peter realizes, that he mentioned how very young his boy is, and how that affects them.

He thinks it was very bad timing.

 

~*~

 

Two weeks later, he comes home, and brings the Argent girl with him. They both reek of sex and lust, and Stiles’ eyes are bright and fixed on Peter, as the werewolf fights the shift.

Later, he will tell himself it’s because of Allison, the way her scent clung to him.

Later, he will tell himself it’s because of Allison, an Argent in his den an affront to every instinct he possessed.

Later, he will deny it altogether.

But in that single moment, when Stiles stands next to her, the scent of her still on his lips, his hair a mess from her fingers--Peter _wants_.

And Stiles smiles, bright and victorious and far too knowing.


	13. Guarded

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the tags, friends. Full warnings at the end.

After he brings Allison home, things...change.

Peter is still _there_ , present in a way Stiles isn’t used to from adults,  hasn’t been used to since his mother died---and he doesn’t like to think about that, doesn’t like to think about his father’s failings--but he’s different. There’s a distance to him, something guarded in his eyes and touch.

Stiles waits, because he is nothing if not patient. He doesn’t bring Allison back to the house again--kisses her quiet when she presses, makes excuses that are flimsy but hold--but he doesn’t stop seeing her either. He’ll stumble into the house, and Peter’s eyes will track him, tight and angry, hot and jealous. He’ll touch Peter’s shoulder, tense under his fingers, subtle scent marking before he goes upstairs and washes her scent off of him.

When he comes back, smelling only of himself, he will curl in Peter’s arms, eat the food Peter prepares him, bare his throat for the wolf to nose into, layering his scent into the clean skin, and he will breath and _wait._

 

~*~

 

The house isn’t big. Stiles expected it to be, and he looks at it curiously as Peter parks in front of it.

It’s on the edge of Beacon Hills, back into the preserve, and it's beautiful. It blends well into the trees, set far enough off the road that if found its only because it was being looked for. There is a wide porch swing and pretty bay windows and it looks like _home._

Peter watches him, eyes cautious and guarded, while Stiles wanders through it. He pauses when he gets to the bedrooms and sees that there are two.

Its been almost a year since the Sheriff died and Stiles has never spent a night alone in his bed.

“You might want space, now that you have Allison,” Peter says, quietly, eyes distant and guarded.

Stiles stares at him, for a long moment before he huffs and shakes his head, and goes back downstairs.

 

~*~

 

Peter takes to shifting, before he climbs in Stiles bed, curling up furclad next to Stiles, his eyes closed while Stiles talks.

It's _infuriating_.

He allows it, for a week.

 

~*~

 

Stiles shifts. It says something about the pack bonds and trust Peter has in him that Wolf doesn’t wake, when he moves, shifting away from the heavy bulk of the alpha. He can smell Peter, a scent that never seems to change, even when Wolf is present instead of the man.

He trusts that scent, trusts Peter and Wolf. Peter was the only one who never left. Even before Dad died, Peter was there. Wolf was there, always protective and happy to see him.

He thinks it’s strange. He’s thinks no one would understand it.

But he thinks too, about Peter’s words, those long months ago now. _We decide what we are._

He closes his eyes and lets the scent of Peter fill up his senses as he jerks himself off, and he isn’t quiet, he isn’t still--he moves, a slow roll of his hips that shakes the bed, a reedy keen in his throat, and he _knows_ Peter is awake, feels it when he shifts and it makes him gasp, makes him arch, his cock throbbing in his hand. Peter shifts, and his hand closes over Stiles knee, too warm and too human, and Stiles comes with a broken off cry, his whole body aching with the force of it. His vision goes white and his toes curl and for an endless moment all he knows is the scent of Peter and pleasure crashing through him.

When he can breath again, come is cooling on his belly and his cock is limp and Peter…

Peter is looking at him and there is nothing guarded or distant about the hot _want_ in his eyes. “I don’t want separate rooms,” he whispers, voice raspy and intent, and Peter nods, silently.

He stops Stiles when he moves to clean up, reaches for his discarded tshirt and wipes the come away carefully.

He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t shift when he curls around Stiles, and Stiles smiles as he closes his eyes and presses close, drifting to sleep in his wolf’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stiles does not get consent before masturbating in front of Peter. Peter doesn't complain, but Stiles is being deliberately manipulative.


	14. Clock

Time was a strange and simple thing, when he was a Wolf.

Life was ruled by the moon, by hunger and the sun rising and setting. It was ordered by the changing seasons, and the waxing and waning, and his Boy’s arrival in the trees, by the taste of blood and ash and clean water and sweat damp skin in his mouth.

It was not ordered by a clock that moves to slow and keeps his Boy from him.

It was not restricted by a calendar and numbers that say his Boy is too young.

Wolf snarls and darts through the trees, and he can still smell it, the shark musky scent of _Stiles,_ can still see him, sprawled near naked in their bed, come milky and gleaming against pale skin.

He stumbles over a root, and ahead of him, the doe he’s chasing crashes into the underbrush, into safety. He lays there, panting and trembling, furious and unfulfilled.

He lays there, until his heartbeat slows and he can hear another heartbeat, familiar and untroubled, in the preserve, and he realizes the clock has released his Boy, and shoves to his feet, loping toward him.

 

~*~

 

When school gets out for the summer, Stiles drags Peter to dinner with Allison and Scott. Melissa McCall watches them, but as she watches Stiles leaning into Allison’s space, his lips brushing her hair when they talk, his gaze avid and bright, some of he ever present suspicion in her gaze dulls and her scent goes warm and almost apologetic.

She smiles at him, before she takes Scott away.

Allison. Allison is different. Peter smiles at her, and feels Wolf baring his teeth.

This girl smells of Stiles, smells of fond warmth, of sex and sated pleasure and _his_ boy and he’s never wanted to kill someone as much as he wants to kill her.

He sees what Melissa doesn’t--he sees the way Stiles touches her, but his gaze flicks to Peter.

He sees the caresses that never turn toward Stiles, the way he keeps her from tangling their fingers together, keeps her from tucking against his throat.

He sees the subtle coldness in his boy that pushes her away, even when she’s curled in his arms.

He trembles with it, the desire to rip her away from Stiles, with the desire to see Stiles play this out.

Eventually, the clock turns and he is quietly gracious as he escorts Allison home, and patiently polite, while Stiles presses her into the round column of her family’s front porch, and kisses her.

He can smell the scent of sex, hot and  thick on his tongue, and her want, so strong he wonders how Stiles, _can't_ smell it.

His lips are distractingly shiny when he climbs back into the car, and Peter wonders what he would look like with lipgloss like Allison's .

 

~*~

 

The clock ticks, and Peter lies next to Stiles. The boy is reading, his voice slow and steady and soothing, the scent of Allison long since banished and Peter thinks--there are reasons why he shouldn’t do this.

Reasons he should straighten and roll away, sleep with his back to the boy.

But he can smell, still, sweet and warm in his Boy’s scent, arousal. Can see the hungry want in his eyes.

And he is fucking _tired_ of arbitrary clocks and their control of his life.

Stiles is his, and he wants this.

“Can I do something?” Peter asks, quiet and intrusive in the cadence of Stiles’ reading.

He blinks slow and warm at Peter, mouth open and eyes trusting. “Anything,” he breathes.

He’s careful as he comes up to straddle his boy.

Careful as he noses at Stiles’ throat, licking the skin and nipping at the pulse jumping beneath his lips.

He’s careful as he presses his hands to Stiles hips, pushing his shirt up and revealing the pale body he’s so familiar with. He’s careful when he shifts his pants and boxers down, and his cock hangs naked and hard between them.

He’s careful, even when Stiles gasps, a low broken noise of want in his throat as Peter wraps a shaky hand around himself and starts stripping his cock. He’s not touching Stiles, not anywhere but where his lips are pressed into his throat, and the boy isn’t moving, holding almost painfully still as he lets Peter take what he needs--but it’s overwhelming, almost too much.

“Peter,” Stiles whispers, and he whines, a noise he hates himself for, even as he comes, his release splattering across Stiles belly and making the teen twitch and shudder.

Peter smiles, as he realizes the boy has come, just from watching Peter getting off and coming across his belly.

Stiles whimpers when Peter runs his fingers under his boxers, in the milky mess, and smears it with his own come, rubbing it into Stiles’ skin.

“You’re mine, sweetheart,” he murmurs, and Stiles’ nods, eyes bright.

 

~*~

 

The clock ticks and the days pass and Stiles fucks the pretty Argent princess and comes to their bed, and Peter marks him, spills across his belly while Stiles murmurs encouragement and dirty praise, while he begs and whines for more, to be fucked, to be filled, dammit Peter, _please._

It won’t last. Peter thinks Stiles knew that when he first took up with Allison--thinks their a ticking time bomb, and sometimes, he worries about the fallout.

But his boy is _his,_ even when in Allison’s bed, and Peter thinks any fallout is worth that indisputable truth.  


	15. Weak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay on this! I am sick and struggling to get words down. Enjoy. <3

There are stories told, about a dying town and a powerful family. 

About the way they rid Beacon Hills of the werewolves that plagued them, drove them out and claimed the town for the good law abiding humans. They settled there, in that quiet dying town and they prospered, strong and healthy and powerful. 

Those are the stories told. Every child knows, about the first Argent to walk into Beacon Hills, and every one since, who would come in and  _ change _ things. 

Even now, Gerard Argent is mayor and his pretty daughter is sheriff. They are strong and untouchable and proud. 

That then, is the story. 

This--this is the truth--

The Argents are dying. 

The once proud family is weak, a shadow of everything they once were. It was reduced to this: a dying father and a crazy daughter, a son neither trusted, and a beautiful princess none controlled. 

The Argents legacy was a shattered, wretched thing. 

And Stiles knew it. 

 

~*~

 

They move the week before school resumes, and Stiles gives Peter a pouting, knowing smile, when he pushes Stiles gently away, refusing to bed him, even now. 

“You know it’s not wrong,” he says, quietly. “I want you.” 

Peter is quiet, and then, “I know. And I want you. But I need to wait.” 

Stiles wasn’t sure  _ what _ Peter was waiting for, but he nodded, reluctantly resigned, and let it be. 

 

~*~

 

“Daddy lost another contract,” Allison murmurs, tugging Stiles into her bedroom, away from the shouting and fury, and Stiles peers down at the hall. Gerard and Kate are angry and Chris Argent is standing between them, his face tight and furious and trapped. 

Stiles likes Chris. He feels for the man, caught between two people he loathes. 

Allison pulls him into her room and presses him into her bed and he twists, away from her questing hands and lips. 

He sees the tight moue of distaste, and he huffs, leans in to kiss her quickly. 

“Why did he lose the contract?” 

 

~*~

 

Stiles is quiet through the next few days. He can feel Peter watching him, the quiet concern in him, but Wolf is still and patient. Moments like this, Stiles sees the creature in the forest, not the man in his kitchen and he wonders at the strangeness of his life. 

He has an idea, and he isn’t sure how Wolf will take it. 

The thing is--the truth neither of them look at too closely--is that Peter is not as strong as he would like the world to believe. 

He is only ever as strong as he  _ needs _ to be, for Stiles. 

“Do you ever go back?” 

“To where?” 

Stiles stares at him, steady and unflinching. “To the nemeton.” 

Peter’s hands tremble, just a little, just enough that Stiles sees the minute sign of weakness. It’s enough that Stiles slips off his stool, and pads across the room to stand before his wolf. “There’s something wrong here, Peter. Beacon Hills is dying--you know it is. The Argents are dying--” 

“ _ Let them,”  _ Peter snarls. 

“The Argents are dying. And yet you didn’t--you are the only thing that has been untouched by the death since the pack was slaughtered.” 

“Do you think I want to save this town?” 

“I think you love the town. You hate the Argents and you love the town, and you are scared.”

Peter snarls, his eyes glinting red, and Stiles reaches up, twisting his hand around Peter’s neck, sinking his fingers in Peter’s hair. “I don’t blame you--they took so much from you and the nemeton--” 

“They nemeton kept me alive. It’s not a tourist attraction,” Peter snaps. 

Stiles flinches. Withdraws a little and puts some distance between them. “I--but it’s the heart of the territory. It matters to the pack. I just--” He shakes his head and stumbles back, fleeing the room, “Sorry.” 

He can feel Peter watching him go. 

 

~*~

 

“It’s sacred, pup,” Peter murmurs, sliding into bed behind him. Stiles is stiff and still in his arms. “And it’s powerful in ways I don’t understand. I--I want to protect you.” 

Stiles twists in his arms, and glares up at him. Peter’s eyes are glinted red, and claws are digging lightly into Stiles hips--Wolf is  on edge, more out of control than Stiles is used to. 

“But it’s ours.  _ Our  _ pack serves it, and it protects us,” Stiles touches his face, gentle and Peter sudders, Wolf fading from his eyes. “You don’t need to protect me from this. But we do need to protect Beacon Hills.” 

Peter sighs and holds him closer. Stiles rubs his back and hums and Peter whispers, quiet and shaky, “Ok, sweetheart. Ok” 


	16. Angular

The tree branches are sharp, cutting angular and foreboding across the night sky. Wolf huffs as he catches the scent of a rabbit, nose twitching. Boy's fingers are dug into his ruff and he pads along silently, the rabbit forgotten. 

He can feel it, the quiet ripples of magic, and he whines, low and distressed.

The trees grow thicker here, and he doesn't remember, really. 

But it wraps around him too, the memory that he can't quite focus on but can never quite forget. 

He stumbled here, bloody and burning, his pack's screams still in his ears. 

He couldn't forget this place if he tried. 

The trees are tightly packed, and for a moment, Boy hesitates and Wolf whines. 

The trees almost sigh and loosen and Wolf steps forward. 

The nemeton is...different. 

The ancient tree is withered, almost brittle, and it smells….wrong. He shifts, and whimpers, and Stiles takes a cautious step forward. 

“What--” 

Something slams into him, into  _ them _ and Stiles shouts, before--

 

~*~

 

There was a place where the veils between worlds were thin, and magic crept like grass growing, a thick bright thing like a river. 

There was a place--and They walked there, in the young trees and untouched earth, and They were happy. 

Time was slow, then, turned immeasurably slow, and They were content. 

There was a time, in that place, when They thought They would always be happy. 

They were wrong. 

 

~*~

 

There is a story. A story not even told in whispers now, werewolves too few and too hunted to whisper their stories any longer. But they whispered it once--

The moon loved a man. And the man loved the moon. The sun, in it’s greed, cursed the man, and he walked as a man under the sun, and ran as a wolf in the light of his lover. 

That is the story told, the story of the man who became a wolf who loved the moon and the moon who treasured him, gifted him and his strength and healing and power beyond that of his fellow man. 

That is the story, the one no one speaks of anymore, the story of the first werewolf. 

It’s only that. A story. 

This--this is the truth. 

She loved him. A faerie princess of the Unseelie Court loved a Seelie Knight. They walked, here, strong and whole and happy. She was silver touched beauty wrapped in shadows and nightmares, he was angular and sharp, his words and touch cutting, a golden shining thing, and they were  _ happy. _

And cursed, for their happiness. 

She was banished, and he was cursed, and They were stripped, of their power. And when he would not renounce his lover, the Seelie Queen slit his throat, there in the grove where They had once been happy. 

His princess struck the Seelie Queen and she fled, into the world of men, bleeding power and in the last brush of her’s, the princess wove her magic, closed the veils. 

She trapped her Seelie and Unseelie cousins beyond the world of mortal men, and to the murderous Queen, damned her to a life of age and death and ignominy. 

It was, she thought, a fitting death. 

She stayed there, withering and content to wither, held her dead lover in her arms. Wolves came to them, lay against her for warmth. Brought her the very best meats from their hunts, and watched with increasingly worried eyes, when she faded, body gaunt and angular. 

“Bless you,” she whispered, a whisper that sounded like wind and echoing caverns. “Bless all of you.” 

She died. They died, together, and a tree grew  in their grove, roots dug deep and cradling their dead bodies, holding them together and feeding magic into the lands. 

The story should end there--with the lovers dead and their weak vengeance wrought. 

Stories end. 

But this one--this one did not. 

There was, still, a disgraced and exiled queen. 

There was, always, a blessed wolf, animals who could take the shape of a man, who valued family and love and  _ mates _ . 

The story should end--

But it didn’t. 

 

~*~

 

Wolf woke, and he whined, burrowing into his Boy, whimpering. The tree is withering, and he  _ knows _ now, knows what that means. 

The tree--the lovers dead now for untold ages--had once found comfort in a pack that did not need them. 

And a lone wolf, driven from his home and near death, had found comfort and safety in them. 

“We need to help them,” he whispers against Stiles’ leg, and he isn’t sure when he shed Wolf and became Peter. 

He thinks that should worry him. 

“We will,” Stiles says, and he stares at the sky the silvery moon threading through the thin, leafless branches. 

“We will.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things:   
> 1\. That damn tree was _never_ just a tree.   
>  2\. All y'all hoping to figure out and so excited about what Stiles is doing? Yeah. Me too. I have no fucking clue where this story is going so. *jazz hands*


	17. Swollen

He’s dating Allison Argent.

He is the lonely pale boy, the boy the entire town pitied and tutted over, and she is the daughter of the mayor, the pretty smiling princess that the town adored.

And if there is anything that Stiles has done right, that has been within the expectations of this quiet dying town--it is dating Allison Argent.

He kisses her and smiles, holds her close--but never too close--and nods agreeably when her family questions him and invites him into their home.

He’s dating Allison Argent and the town smiles, all warm approval and happiness.

He’s dating Allison Argent and when he leaves her, he goes home, to the quiet house Peter built them, climbs into bed with his wolf, and watches as the other man brings himself off.

He’s dating Allison Argent, and he always knew there was a time limit, a end date because Alli was only ever a means to an end--and still. He did not expect this.

 

~*~

 

Her lips are swollen and her hair is a mess, and her shoulders are bare, a bruise dark and stark against her collar bone, and she’s staring at him, a mix of fear and defiance in her eyes.

He won’t look at Scott, refuses to meet his puppy eyes filled with guilt.

“How long?” he asks, and it’s far more curious than it is angry.

He might be surprised, but Stiles has no misconceptions about his right to anger in this situation.

“Stiles,” she starts and he gives her a unimpressed look. She wilts. “A couple months. Not--not long.”

Stiles nods and slides a glance at Scott before his gaze flicks away. “Guess that explains all the cancelled plans, huh, buddy?”

Allison's lips thin but she doesn't say anything to defend them. And there is so much either of them could say.

He nods, once, before he turns and leaves.

 

~*~

 

Stiles is curled up in Peter's chair when he comes back from his run and the wolf freezes when he sees him, eyes bright and lip bitten.

He stands and approaches slowly, carefully, like he's approaching a wild animal.

So often, he still feels like he is.

“What's wrong?” Peter asks, his voice rough the way it always is when Wolf is just below the surface. “Why aren't you with her?”

Her.

He tries so hard to never say her name. Stiles knows how much Peter hates that he's with her. Knows how much the scent of her on him drives Wolf to madness.

It was the point, after all.

Part of the point.

Still.

“Why haven't you fucked me?” Stiles asks and Peter flinches back, his eyes wide. “You want me--you get off on me, with me watching, you rub yourself into my skin. But you won't touch me. You won't get off with me or kiss me or fuck me. Why?”

Peter looks like he wants to bolt, and Stiles doesn’t touch him.

He won’t trap him. “Is it because of Allison?”

“You belong to her,” Peter snarls, before rips himself away, pacing. “You _chose_ her.”

“I chose _you!”_ Stiles snaps back. “She was only ever a means to an end.”

“ _What_ end?”

“ _You!”_ Stiles almost screams. “ _You_ , you stupid bastard.”

Peter goes still and Stiles shoves at him, a snarl on his lips. “You think Melissa was going to stop worrying, stop pushing me to move in with her, if I didn’t do _something_ to convince her I wasn’t being fucked by you? You think the whole town was going to smile and nod about a smugly superior antisocial asshole taking in their favorite orphan if they thought you were all over me? And they _would_ , that’s how this goes--even with Alli, they talk. It’s just--with Alli they talk _less.”_

Peter is staring at him, and his hands are shaking, pupils wide and eyes bleeding red. “Why _her?”_

Stiles sighs, and shakes his head. “You know why.”


	18. Bottle

They can’t have this.

They can't have _him_ , because he's her's.

Except he's standing there, in their den, dressed in their over-sized sweater, the one that is too big and hangs over his ass, hides his hands, and bares his long pale throat. And he's saying that it was for him, that the Argent girl was a smokescreen.

A false scent trail, Wolf murmurs.

He's brilliant, Peter thinks.

He's brilliant and savagely unapologetic, and staring at them defiant and hopeful.

And they love him.

So often, Peter and Wolf are out of step, too many years tipped to one or the other, their instincts torn between a world they've outlived and an animal instinct they can no longer embrace.

But in this--they are united.

They love him.

And they have choked that down, bottled it up, for so long it's no real surprise, that when Peter reaches for _StilesmateBoymine_ , his hands shake and it feels overwhelming, like he's coming out of his skin as he brushes Stiles hair back and stares down at him, awe and disbelief in his voice when he whispers, "Sweetheart."

"Kiss me," Stiles whispers, and Peter groans and shifts, dipping in to kiss him.

Finally.

Finally.

 

~*~

 

It's fast.

He has a pang of regret over that, a fleeting desire to slow this down, to take his time and take his Boy apart slow.

Wolf snarls, and Stiles' nails dig into his shoulders when he tries to draw back.

"Bed," Peter murmurs, because if this is happening--this is happening--it will be in their bed, where he can at least press his Boy into the mattress that pale skin pink against their dark sheets.

It's a stumbling rush, and Boy yelps once, and Peter pulls him up and into his arms, and Stiles wraps his legs around Peter's narrow waist, jerking a snarling moan from Wolf. "More," Stiles presses the word into Peter's mouth, traces it there with his tongue and Peter sucks every whispering plea from him, swallows them down as he lowers Stiles to the bed. He rubs over Stiles' bulge with slow meticulous care and he bucks against Peter's hand, whining.

He's seen Stiles naked, and it still feels like a revelation, his skin stubble burnt and lips swollen, and he moves fast after stripping him, presses hard against Stiles while he moves restless against Peter, presses into him with careful but too quick fingers.

And Stiles begs for more, greedy beautiful, luminescent boy.

When he presses in, Stiles gasps, hands scrambling at Peter's back, eyes fixed on Peter.

It's going to be over too soon, he thinks, pressing deep, and listening to the shuddering sigh Stiles gives up. "More," Stiles gasps, and Peter sets a slow steady rhythm that makes his boy whine and buck against him, lean up and bite at his pec.

Peter snarls and his tenuous control snaps, and he fucks Stiles.

Hard, thrusts deep and almost punishing, grip on Stiles cock fast and hard and sure, everything he's always wanted to give him, everything _she_ couldn't give Stiles, too soft and gentle.

He's buried in his boy, where she never touched, where no one will ever touch, and Stiles is coming apart under him and it's everything Peter ever dreamt it would be.

"Stiles," he gasps. "I can't--"

"I know," Stiles whispers, and he closes his eyes, shuddering through another wave of pleasure when Peter hits his prostate dead on. "I know. Come for me. Please, alpha, please, come for me."

He does. He goes off like a bottle rocket, a roar trapped behind his teeth, fangs itching to drop, and he forces it back and bites down on Stiles’ neck, shuddering through the waves of pleasure and smiling as his boy groans and comes between them.

 

~*~

 

Stiles is sprawled across his belly, and they smell of sex and pack and _mates_ , and Peter runs a finger over Stiles spine. "Why now?"

Stiles closes his eyes. "Because she slept with Scotty."

A wave of fury washes over him, and his grip tightens, almost bruisingly tight.  Stiles squeaks and he forces his grip to go lax. "She's an idiot."

"She wasn't. She knew--I  was a bad boyfriend, Peter. She wasn't so stupid she didn't know I wanted someone else."

Peter closes his eyes and holds him close. "You're mine, now."

There is a smile in Stiles voice, "Always, alpha."


	19. Scorched

He wakes up in Peter’s arms now, and he thinks this is the happiest he’s ever been.

There are some things to worry about. He's sixteen now and Melissa's eyes are worried when she looks at him, like she worries about his safety, old concerns brought to life again.

“You don’t look happy,” she says, once, and Stiles shrugs.

“My girlfriend was fucking my best friend. So I guess maybe I’m not.”

She flinched at that, and made an apologetic face before darting away.

Allison comes to him, once, her face twisted up and uncertain, and Peter sent her away, coldly protective before she could speak to him.

He thinks Peter’s blatant possessiveness is his new favorite thing.

Maybe after orgasms.

Peter rumbles next to him, and Stiles twists, presses his smile into Peter’s skin as Wolf presses claws gently to his skin.

He turns his face up to his wolf, and smiles.

 

~*~

 

Scott finds him in a deserted clearing in the preserve, and for a moment, Stiles bristles. He doesn’t want to share this place with Scott.

But then--this scorched ground is where Peter lost his family, once. Maybe there’s sense to this. A poetic irony.

“C’mon, man, you gotta forgive me.”

“I really don’t,” Stiles says, and Scott sighs.

“You--she felt invisible. Like your whole world was wrapped up with something she wasn’t invited to.”

“Yeah? Then maybe she should have talked to me about it, and not fucked my best friend.”

“Maybe if everyone in your life didn’t feel like that, we _would_ talk to you about it,” Scott says quietly.

Stiles stares at the barren ground and wonders where they died. Three nieces, a nephew, two sisters and a brother in law and seven cousins. A wife.

Stiles feels a pang at that, closes his eyes. “What exactly am I supposed to say, Scott? What am I supposed to say?”

“You could talk to me,” Scott says, quietly. “You--it’s like, after you stopped talking, after your dad--”

Stiles snarls, and he hears Wolf in the noise, shocking himself _and_ Scott. His best friend goes quiet and then. “You don’t talk, Stiles. I--maybe you talk to Peter? But you haven’t talked to me in years. And you’ve never talked to her. “

“So you thought fucking her was the way to get me to talk? Because your logic is missing a few steps,” Stiles says coldly.

“We didn’t want to hurt you,” Scott says, softly.

“Yeah, well--you did,” Stiles says softly.

He pauses, before he walks away. “You need to be ready--her family is batshit. So--good luck with that.”

He glances at the dead land a final time, before he walks away from it, and Scott.

 

~*~

 

The library archiver room is dank and dusty, and Stiles smirks when Peter sneezes. He wrinkles his nose at the boy, before curling in a corner with his book, reading quietly while Stiles pages through books that are old and dusty.

“What do you think you’ll find, sweetheart?” Peter asks, curiously, after it’s been going on for a few weeks.

“The nemeton showed us that for a reason,” Stiles says absently.

Peter frowns, shifting to come stand behind his boy. It’s strange, Stiles thinks, to not lean into his warmth and weight.

“They died,” Peter says. He leans down, and his voice is warm in Stiles’ ear. “But you aren’t looking for them, are you? You’re looking for the one she trapped.”

Stiles nods. “The tree holds their power, right? And they kept you alive, kept the town healthy and vibrant--what if there was a reason for it?”

“You--” Peter straightens. “You think her descendents are _here?”_

“If the ones they loved are--why not her’s?” Stiles asks, and Peter stares at him. “What if the stories in this town aren’t just the Hale history and my father’s death and the slow slide of decay and death?”

“You think the Argents have a story.”

Stiles smiles, sharp and feral, and Peter’s eyes flash in answer. “I know they do.”


	20. Breakable

This is what they knows, Peter and Wolf both--Stiles wants them.

Stiles _needs_  them and they will do anything, kill anyone, to protect the tiny pack they have left.

And would bathe in Argent blood, if he could and not see it hurt Stiles.

 

~*~

 

It takes Stiles--and Peter because once he realizes what his boy is doing, he can’t not help--months to track it down.

There is what they learn in the archives, a genealogy they trace to France.

There is what they learn from Stiles’ months in Allison’s bed, a family haughty and proud, and strangely zealous with no cause.

There is what Peter learns, when he kisses Stiles gently and leaves him there, in their little den and follows the trail the Argent’s past laid, all the way to Paris, and a small farmhouse, and an ancient groundskeeper with a story.

 

~*~

 

Peter calls him, in the early hours of the morning, when Stiles is sitting in the dark, the witching hour. And when he does, when his Boy’s voice echoes small and warm through the endless miles between them, the tight, breakable feeling in his gut eases, just a little. He listens, to Stiles talk, about the small town they call home, and the school that still demands too much of his time.

It’s there, in the dark, that Peter allows himself to say, “I miss you.”

A quiet confession.

“I miss you too, alpha,” Stiles says, gently, a calming balm.

“Did you find what we were looking for?” he asks and Peter rolls his head on the musty pillow in his tiny hotel room and wishes he could bring his Boy here.

“Yes,” he says, quietly and Stiles makes a pleased, victorious noise.

“What are you going to do with it?” he asks.

Silence greets him, and then, “Wolf, you--This isn’t for me. You know that, right? I’m doing this because they hurt you, killed your pack. I hate them for what they did--but you’re the one who lived with it.”

Peter is silent for a long moment, listening to his boy breath, listening to the creaking of an unfamiliar house around him, and he wonders--how did he come to this?

And even knowing that he doesn’t want to actually face this--would he do anything different? Would he walk away when he smelt his Boy in the Preserve?

“Peter,” Stiles murmurs.

“I love you,” Peter says, words he’s never said. It’s there, in his actions, in the way he touches Stiles, the way he cares for him.

It’s _there_ and unspoken because there is this--

Peter is afraid, always, of trapping his Boy, and of losing him.

“You--Peter, you _can’t_ say that,” Stiles says, pained, and it feels like he is shattering, every part of him breakable under the weight of that small sentence.

He makes a noise, something small and Stiles whines, distressed. “No, no, shh. Wolf, listen to me. Peter. You--I want you here. I want to look at you, touch you, when you say that. Do you understand? You’re--god, you’re so far away, and I just want you to come home.”

It settles the uneasy broken feeling but not--not completely.

Just enough. As much as he’ll get while Stiles is five thousand miles away.

 

~*~

 

There is a story, in France, in Lozere, of a family.

A family that grew wealthy and strong in the wake of war, a family bound to the name Argent.

They talk of the family’s fondness for hunt, the way they were honored for killing La Bete, and the bravery of the sons they sent to war.

These, then, are the stories.

This--this is the truth:

She was found in the dead of winter, pale and blonde and beautiful. She spoke neither English nor French, but she was beautiful and in distress, and a young farmer took her in.

They never learned her name, but they called her Argent, because when she was very angry, her eyes would flare silver.

She wed a minor landowner, and never did explain why she was found in a snow drift that night, or where she came from--and eventually they stopped asking.

They called her Argent, and her family took the name, as they realized she was _different,_ blessed and powerful and willing to impart those blessings.

She would wander, sometimes, and come back, smelling of old trees and windswept, tears and fury in her eyes.

It was her great grandson, a boy named Kristoff, who killed the first wolf.

It was his daughter, Marie-Jeanne, who killed La Bete, and when Madam Argent died, far older than any had a right to be, her progeny had spread even to America, and she smiled as they killed every wolf they found.

There are stories told, of a family, ancient and noble and strong.

And there is this truth: they are killers, every one, born to murder, bred to hate, and he wants them _dead._

 

~*~

 

Stiles is waiting when he steps into baggage, beautiful and smiling, and almost vibrating out of his skin as he waits, and Peter walks right into his arms, buries his head in the boy’s shoulder and inhales, and feels like, for the first time since he left, he’s _home._

 

~*~

 

There is a moment, when Stiles is preparing their dinner, that Peter starts talking, telling him what he learned, and Stiles twists to him, presses a kiss, chaste and sweet, to his lips, and says, “Not yet.”

Peter nods, and goes quiet against him.

 

~*~

 

In their bed, Boy sprawled across him, sweaty and come drunk, Peter feels that last bit of fragile tension unravel, and he sighs. Inhales the scent of _packsafehomeBoymateStiles._

“Missed you,” he mumbles and Stiles presses a smiling kiss to Peter’s chest.

Whispers the words he didn’t realize he’s been waiting for, until they’re there, spilled like a secret between them.

“I love you too, Peter.”


	21. Drain

Stiles likes research. 

He always has, since he was a lonely boy in a quiet house, waiting for his father to come home. 

He likes digging into things, finding the truth behind the stories. 

Scott used to say it’s because his dad was Sheriff and never thought the story was what really happened. 

Stiles thinks it’s just because he’s curious. 

But either way--he is curious, likes stories and reasons why and this one--this reason why--makes him want to scream. 

 

~*~

 

He slips through the trees and into the grove where the nemeton is withering. 

The magic of it pulses a little, a kind of shifting in the air that warms him before it settles, thick and tired, like a layer of leaves on the ground. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs, as he approaches the tree, sitting down and leaning back against it comfortably. The bark digs into his shoulders, but it’s pleasant. Grounding. 

“You kept him alive, and I know you didn’t have to. That it was a kindness. Thank you. I--he’s a good man. A good Wolf. And I love him.” 

The leaves whisper, and he wonders if they tell a story. If the tree whispers secrets and if anyone hears them.

“We found her children,” Stiles says and the magic flares hot and weak, over him. 

 

~*~

 

Stiles sees Scott and Allison in town. 

He sees the way she leans into him and the way that Scott allows it, never keeping a small but important distance between them. 

He sees the way she listens to him, and he talks to her. 

He thinks he’s supposed to be angrier than he is. But he sees them and he goes home, back to Peter and their warm, comforting den, and he isn’t angry. 

He thinks, they will never have something like this. And thinks, what they have is small and still special, still important. 

 

~*~

 

This is the story, the one that Stiles learns in his and Peter’s research, that he puts together with what the nemeton told them. 

There was a Unseelie princess. And a Seelie guard. And they loved, when it was forbidden, slipped through the veils to find each other and happiness in a quiet, love-filled glade. 

And they were betrayed and cursed and killed, and the Unseelie princess threw her cousin princess into the mortal realm, across the world in a wash of furious power. 

They were helped, both of them, by wolves and man, and the enmity between the two princesses set them against--wolves and man--at odds, and that bloody feud has lasted for five hundred years. 

That is the story, the truth, and there is this, also--they gave that grove power. Their power, rich and full and it has slowly trickled away, a slow drip drain, for five hundred years. 

That is the story, the truth, as Stiles knows it. 

There only remains one thing: the end. 

 

~*~

 

“He wants to kill them,” Stiles murmurs. “And I think you want him to. But it won’t stop this, will it?” 

There is no answer, not that he expects one. There is only the whispering of the winds and the quietly weakening magic. 

 

~*~

 

Peter watches him, when he slips into their den, crawls into bed with him and sits, cross-legged and bright eyed. 

“How do you want to kill them?” 

 


	22. Expensive

When Peter was young and lived in his sister’s house and pack,  he liked pretty things. Expensive shoes and fine clothing, rare books and puzzles that made Talia laugh and shake her head in quiet fond exasperation. 

He was fascinated by what he couldn't have and greed for what he could. 

He couldn't have Aleksander Argent, and maybe he was greediest for that. For a beautiful man who was forbidden. 

Even then, Argents were hunters and dangerous. 

 

~*~

 

Sometimes, the hardest part of being human and not Wolf is the memories. 

He  _ remembers _ running with his sister, with his nieces and nephew, with cousins and his pretty wife that he cared for even if he didn’t love. 

He  _ remembers _ sitting in the den, tucked into the library that Talia never pushed him from, even when none of the pack was allowed there, remembers reading until his eyes ached and he woke covered in a blanket that smelt of pack and alpha, his book gone and the lights dim, and content in the knowledge he was safe and loved, he drifted back to sleep. 

He  _ remembers _ meeting Aleksander,  and the fascination with him that tugged at Peter. 

He remembers too, meeting Gerard, Aleksander's twin. As time goes by, he remembers everything. 

He remembers this too--he was the Left Hand, the killer, the keeper of secrets, the one who meddled and manipulated and lied. 

 

~*~

 

He remembers and sometimes he wishes he could forget. 

 

~*~

 

When he sees Chris Argent for the first time, all he can see is Aleksander, beautiful and laughing in bed, before Peter married, before their families dragged them apart. Before Aleksander was killed in a senseless war. 

Stiles leans into his side and the weight and scent of his boy grounds him, keeps him present and not lost in twisting memories. 

Christopher, Stiles murmurs when they curl on the couch, is a good man. 

But Christopher is an Argent, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile good with the family that slaughtered his. 

He doesn’t know how to reconcile them with the family that killed their own son. 

 

~*~

 

“I loved a man, once,” Peter mumbles. He presses it into Stiles’ skin and his boy tenses, the way he always does when Peter talks about before the years in the forest. 

He isn’t  _ jealous _ , precisely, but he hates it, too--that Peter had a life Stiles can never fully know.

“What was he like?” 

Peter blinks and ponders. Eventually, he says, softly, “He was very kind.” 

“What happened to him?” 

Peter sighs and murmurs, “His twin brother killed him.” 

 

~*~

 

The day Peter sees Chris Argent, he sees echoes of his long dead lover. 

But the day he sees Gerard Argent--

Claws dig into Stiles hips and the boy’s twitch against him is all that tells Peter his control is slipping. 

He sees Aleksander, hanging in the little loft apartment Peter rented for them, the place that was theirs, only theirs, and the scent of something sour and disgusted, something dark and filled with hate, covered the scent of love and happiness and Alek. 

He looks at Gerard, smiling at his pretty, cruel daughter, and he sees Aleksander hanging in their apartment, the top half of his body suspended from the rafters and dripping blood and viscera on the expensive carpet Alek loved. 

He sees his family, dead in their home, and the flames that ate up every good thing he’d ever known. 

“You asked how I want to kill them,” Peter says, and his voice hold a hint of Wolf, and so much rage. Stiles looks at him, curious and Peter smiles. “I want to cut the bastard in half.” 


	23. Muddy

This is what Stiles knows--his mother died, stolen by a disease that ate away at her and even before she was gone, _she_ was gone.

And even when his father was sunk in a bottle and lost to his job, even when he was a pale shadow haunting an empty house, he had his father.

He had his father, and then--

Then a late night whiskey run took him into the path of a bullet, and Stiles was alone, and Peter was there.

This is what he knows.

That if he had not dumped the whiskey down the drain in a childish fit of anger, his father would not have gone to the store.

If he had not fought with his father, he wouldn’t have drunk, that quiet night.

If he had only stayed quiet and still, and--

This is what Stiles knows: he was angry, and petulant, and his father died.

That is the story Stiles knows, the truth he believes.

But it isn’t the whole truth.

 

~*~

 

Stiles stares at the police report. And the thin file Peter has put together.

Peter is quiet and still, his eyes glowing red in the dim kitchen, and Stiles is aware, distantly, of the alpha’s attention.

But his gaze is fixed on the police report.

“I’ve never read it,” he says, softly. His fingers brush the paper, almost gently. “I--they said I was too little. I could hack the system, but Dad hated when I did that.”

Peter is quiet, and Stiles blinks at him.

“You know I’d help you, either way, don’t you?”

Peter nods, and opens his arms, and Stiles crashes into him.

 

~*~

 

When Peter takes him to bed, it’s gentle and soothing, sweeping touches, the sharp prick of claws to ground him when Stiles starts to drift, slow and inexorable as he turns Stiles from that damning file, to this, fleeting but all consuming, in the moment.

He fills Stiles with a slow thrust and Stiles gasps and presses back, and his eyes burn with tears, but Peter wraps around him and whispers, “I’m here, sweetheart.”

_You aren’t alone._

 

~*~

 

Later, when Stiles is sprawled on his chest and Peter’s fingers are playing idly over his puffy hole, pressing in just to make Stiles shiver, he asks, his voice hitching, “Can I kill her?”

Peter stares at her, and he thinks he’ll see disgust or regret in the other man’s eyes.

Instead he sees burning love and fierce lust and Stiles barely hears his rasped out _yes_ before Peter is pushing him to his back and shoving deep into him, pulling a startled, pleased moan from the boy.

 

~*~

 

There are stories told, about a Sheriff killed a hero, saving a helpless unarmed civilian in a robbery gone wrong.

They say he was brave.

They say he was a good sheriff, a loving husband, a devoted father.

Two of those are true.

Stiles wishes the third was.

They tell stories--but stories are not always true.

This--this is the truth.

John Stilinski was a popular and fair sheriff who fought with the mayor, who cared about doing what was _right_ and not what he was told.

He as a good sheriff and a bad father, and a worse politician.

And his death wasn’t the accident the stories claim.

 

~*~

 

His shoes are muddy, and the squelch, wet and distracting as he climbs the hill to his father’s grave.

Wolf pads at his side, and when they reach the grave, they sit there, in the chilly wind and cold mud and Stiles stares at the headstone.

“I thought it was my fault,” he murmurs and Wolf whines at him, a low anxious noise. “I dumped out the whiskey. It had to be my fault.” Tears are burning in his eyes and he sniffles as they fall, hot on his hand and trailing into Wolf’s fur.

“But she would have killed him, anyway, wouldn’t she?”

Wolf burrows close, and Stiles--Stiles cries.

 

~*~

 

This--this is the truth.

John Stilinski trusted Kate Argent, and fought Gerard Argent, and dug too deep one too many times.

And she had him killed, messy and painful in a robbery gone wrong and held his inconsolable son in the hospital, hid her triumphant smirk in Stiles’ hair as he sobbed like his world was shattering.

This is the the truth.

The Argents believed themselves special. Above the law. Tiny gods of a tiny town.

But all gods fall.

All gods fall.

 

~*~

 

This--this is the truth:

The Argents killed the Hales. Killed Aleksander, the first man Peter loved. Killed John Stilinski, orphaning Stiles and dared comfort him in the aftermath.

And Stiles twists his fingers in Wolf’s fur and murmurs who own truth. “We’re going to kill them all.”


	24. Chop

When it happens, it’s shocking and sudden. 

When it happens, no one expected it. 

They whisper after, about how  _ happy _ he seemed, how  _ normal _ . 

They whisper about lies and careful hidden truths, and that poor boy. 

They whisper--the entire goddamn town whispers, whispers that follow him when he goes into town, when he jogs, when he strains to catch a fleeting glimpse--

They whisper, and it means nothing, and everything. 

 

~*~

 

It happens like this. 

Stiles Stilinski, the pale orphan son of the dead sheriff, storms into the sheriff’s department, into the office of Kate Argent, and snarls, “Did you know?” 

She blinks at him, slow and sultry, a smile on her lips that’s meant to calm and says, “Know what, sugar?” 

“Did you know that Peter is a goddamn  _ werewolf?”  _

 

~*~

 

It happens like this. 

Stiles moves out. His emancipation papers are rushed, as quickly as his adoption and guardianship papers were, years ago, when he was shaking and silent in Peter’s arms and his father’s blood was still drying in the parking lot he was killed in. 

Within days, he’s free, and he moves into an apartment down the hall from Chris Argent. 

The Argents sweep into his life like he invited them there. 

And Peter--

Peter is cut out. 

 

~*~

 

The house is empty, and the absence of Stiles hurts like a lost limb, the absence where he’s been chopped out gaping and raw. 

It feels  _ wrong _ having Stiles gone, the place he’s occupied in his heart and house and bed noticeable only because there is no one to fill that space. 

Peter wants to shift, wants to run, wants to go to his Boy and beg him to come home. 

He wants to kill the Argents and drag his Boy from them. 

He wants--god, he  _ wants.  _

He sits quiet in his empty house and he waits. 

 

~*~

 

Once, werewolves were prolific. Packs held land and influence, and protected the towns in their territory, because wolves weren’t so shortsighted to think they didn’t need humans. 

But then--they were killed. 

Some say they fought each other, killed each other. 

Some say they were killed by disease, that they were eaten up by the changing world, unable to sustain in the face of  _ progress.  _

Those are pretty lies told by a victorious people that likes to ignore their ugly truth. 

They were killed. 

Brutally, methodically, with a single-minded focus. 

And those that remained, the tiny families that couldn’t truly be called packs, but that were all that remained of the great packs--they were  _ marked.  _

Werewolves, they said, killed themselves, almost to extinction, and that kind of violence couldn’t be left free and unmonitored. 

They created reservations, cramped territories where werewolves could live and govern themselves, shoved too close, and left them there. 

And if they fought, territorial feuds over land that none of them wanted, and all of them could not claim, that merely proved the point--they were  _ dangerous. _

Some werewolves lived in society, but after the Pack Wars, they were tracked. 

There were registries, and werewolves were required, when moving into a new town or city, to declare their status, and rank in a pack. It was required on a job application, on a rental application, a credit application. 

And Peter--Peter never declared his status. 

 

~*~

 

It’s not surprising, when Gerard and Kate Argent appear on his doorstep, ladden with weapons and wolfsbane and mountain ash. Kate is grinning, wide and gleeful, and Gerard--Gerard gives him the same furiously disgusted look, when he found Aleksander in Peter’s bed. 

It’s not surprising and he smiles at them, warmly welcoming, and steps aside, as he invites them in. 


	25. Prickly

He’s withdrawn, prickly and defensive, almost reclusive in his need to be alone. 

Chris tries to talk to him, but Stiles is cold, almost to the point of rude, softening it only with a small smile. 

He  _ likes _ Chris Argent, and isn’t that just the problem. 

He’s withdrawn and prickly and when Scot shows up at his door with big puppy dog eyes and a sad look on his face, Stiles has to force himself not to slam it closed. 

Instead he nudges it open and let’s his best friend and ex-girlfriend inside.

 

~*~

 

“Did he hurt you?” Scott asks, gently, his eyes wide and understanding and Stiles stares at him like he’s an idiot. 

“Why on earth would you ask that? He’s--he isn’t a goddamn predator, Scott. He’s a werewolf.” 

“Werewolves  _ are  _ predators,” Allison says, the first thing she’s contributed to the conversation since she walked in, and Stiles sends her a scathing look that makes her flinch back, like maybe she regrets speaking up. 

“So are humans,” he says, icily. 

 

~*~

 

People keep  _ watching _ him, and he knew they would--knew that this scrutiny was part of the price--but he hates it. 

He sits in an apartment that feels foreign and cold and  _ not home _ , and wonders if he’s doing the right thing. 

He hopes he’s doing the right thing. 

 

~*~

 

Kate Argent wants to help him. 

That’s what she says, when she sits him down in the office that was once his father’s, where he would sit and do his homework on days John remembered his young son, and where he later sat and watched his dad eat when he brought dinner to the station. 

She sits in his office and smiles wide and shark-like and promises that they’ll make this right, that Peter will never get near him. 

Her eyes are bright and gleam predatory as she leans forward, too intent and interested as she says, “Tell me what you know about him.” 

 

~*~

 

People watch him, and he hears them talking, like they know the truth, hear them whispering. He doesn’t talk to them, doesn’t answer their questions, doesn’t correct their wrong ideas. 

Beacon Hills loves their stories. 

Let them, he thinks. 

Let them whisper. 

Let them fucking drown in them. 

~*~ 

He asked,  _ what do you want.  _

He asked,  _ Do you trust me.  _

And then he smiled, kissed his lover, his alpha, his Wolf, and tore it all to pieces. 

 

~*~

 

He’s wearing black jeans and a plaid and bare feet when Peter stands and opens the door to let the Argents in. 

It takes a few minutes, posturing and threats and Wolf snarling while Peter tries to calm the angry sheriff, the disgusted mayor. 

It took a few minutes before Kate shoves him into living room, skin burning under wolfsbane ropes and a knife at his throat and Stiles looks up at her. 

“What the fuck,” she breathes and Stiles smiles at her, a easy lazy smile, just before he shoots her between the eyes. 


	26. Stretched

Stiles steps neatly over Kate, his toes just barely brushing the blood soaking into the area rug, and comes to stand next to Peter, his gun trained on Gerard. 

The old man….looks it. 

He  _ looks _ every day of his years, his face ashen and pale as he stares down at his dead daughter. 

“We were good to you,” he murmurs and Stiles tilts his head. 

“She killed my father.” 

His expression crunches, does something complicated and ugly and Stiles shrugs. Glances down at the dead woman. 

“That was mine--she took from me, and I took from her.” 

“And me?” Gerard asks, sharply. 

Stiles smiles. 

 

~*~

 

Peter stretches him out in the basement. There’s an old shower set a few inches off the ground, and a drain, and he suspends Gerard above it, and lets his claw snick out. 

There’s a moment, when he pauses. Looks at Stiles, sitting on the staircase with his father’s gun dangling from his hand, eyes intent as he watches Peter.

“You don’t have to stay,” he says and Stiles grins at him. 

It’s bright and beautiful, everything he loves about is Boy, sweet and a little devious. “I’ve never looked away from you. I’m not leaving now, big bad. Do your thing.” 

Peter smiles then, and turns back to Gerard.

 

~*~

 

Stiles took Kate down fast, something they fought about--Peter wanted her to suffer. 

He wanted her to die slow and painful, for hurting his Boy, for killing the Sheriff. 

But they needed her out of the way to bring down Gerard--and Peter conceded that. 

Gerard, though. 

There will be nothing fast about it. 

 

~*~

 

He curses a lot, and when he stops cursing, he screams. 

Stiles likes it. 

Peter likes it more. 

It’s only when his screams stop, when his fingers are broken and the nails have been ripped off, when he’s skinned the bottom of Gerard’s feet and begun skinning his arms--that Peter begins to speak. 

 

~*~

 

Gerard watches him in horror when Peter talks about his pack, and details the ways Gerard killed them. 

He looks like he’s seen a ghost, when Peter brings up Aleksander. 

Peter smiles, then, and breaks his legs.

The scream he makes is beautiful. 

 

~*~

 

It takes Peter almost twelve hours to kill Gerard. 

Twelve hours of slow, agony, and when it’s over, when he’s clawed him open and ripped him up, torn into him so deeply he actually does cut the bastard in half--Stiles stands, stretches for the first time in twelve hours. 

He digs around in the drain for a bit, before he comes up with the bucket, and Peter stares at him. 

He’s bloody, and his eyes are gleaming, and there is a dead man hanging from his basement ceiling, and another dead body upstairs. 

And he’s beautiful. 

“I love you,” Stiles murmurs and Peter smiles at him, blindingly bright, and calm in a way he hasn’t been in a very long time. 

He thinks of his Wolf, out in the preserve, with his haunted eyes and he thinks--this was just. 

This was long overdue.

He sloshes the bloody bucket a little and says, “Come on, Peter. Let’s finish it.” 


	27. Thunder

The day Stiles stumbled into the preserve for the first time, it was raining. 

He was crying, one arm wrapped around his ribs, and his school bag was heavy on his back. 

The woods were dangerous. Everyone said so. But it was getting dark and he was so tired, so lonely and wet and hurt. 

And too--in the woods, no one would follow him. 

That more than anything pushed Stiles from the road he was stumbling down and into the trees. 

And everything changed. 

 

~*~

 

“Peter,” he whispers, presses it against Peter's mouth like a gasp, shaking as Peter licks into his mouth. He tastes like rainwater and blood and Stiles aches, aches for  _ more.  _

_ “Please,”  _ he gasps. 

 

~*~

 

The woods were dark. 

And he was young. 

And so very frightened. 

It took him less than twenty steps into the trees to realize this was a bad idea, and only five more to be truly frightened. 

The people in town--they said something dangerous lived in the woods, something that filled up the night sky with vicious howling and stole children from their beds. 

It was easy, crying and gasping for breath on the side of the road to forget that it was dangerous, that there was worse things in the world than a bully with a bad temper and a mean left hook. 

He remembered now, stumbling in dark, while the thunder cracked overhead. 

 

~*~

 

Stiles moans when Peter takes him in his mouth, sucking him down to the root as his big hands kept Stiles’ legs spread wide and open, exposing him to Peter’s hungry eyes and hands. 

He clenches his hands in Peter’s hair, and thrusts up as much as Peter will allow and bright red eyes gleaming in the darkness. 

 

~*~

 

Thunder shook the air and a howl split the air, and that more than anything is what pushed Stiles to his knees.

He was  _ hungry _ and so tired. His ribs ached from Jackson’s kicks and he could hear the boy’s cold taunts still. 

Most people said that the Sheriff was a good man, a man who worked too much and his son was alone because of it. That he was a good boy, letting his father work and protect their town. 

That was most people. 

Some--some weren’t that kind. 

Some said the truth. 

The truth is this. The sheriff drank to forget his dead wife and ignored his young son, the living reminder of everything he lost. He worked too hard and neglected his boy because he didn’t  _ care. _

Stiles liked--tried so hard--to forget the truth. 

And then Jackson came with his hard hitting hands and cutting words, and stripped away all the pretty lies Stiles told himself. 

He sat in the dark and sobbed, and wished that for once--just once--someone would care about him. 

 

~*~

 

Peter won’t move quickly. He’s slow as he works Stiles open, hands sticky and wet with lube and blood and leaving bloody bruises on his body. He’s slow when he kisses Stiles, slow and hungry and claiming and it’s only the desperate way he clings to Stiles that lets him know--

He isn’t alone. He isn’t alone in this, Peter missed him just as much as Stiles missed him. 

He isn’t alone. 

 

~*~

 

The creature came out of the darkness while he was still sobbing. He froze, his breath caught in his throat while he watched, eyes impossibly wide, body impossible still. 

This was the creature everyone whispered about, the one that killed so indiscriminately. 

He stared as it watched him, a wolf that was tall, thick black fur and powerful legs, and burning red eyes. 

He stared as it watched him, a wolf that never once showed it’s teeth. 

He stared as it finally blinked and crept from the brush to curl around him, a heavy warmth draped over his legs, head tucked into the curve of his throat. 

Stiles squeaked when the wolf--the Beast of Beacon Hills was a  _ wolf _ \--licked over the pulse hammering in his throat, and then the beast huffed, and settled in. 

It took him a long time before he let out his breath and slowly relaxed.  

He isn’t alone.

 

~*~

 

When Peter pushes into him, Stiles screams, and the thunder overhead almost drowns it out. 

He screams and Peter snarls, presses it into his throat and fucks him, there in the dirt where others loved, once, and he presses his teeth there, there  _ there.  _

“Want it,” Stiles gasps, “Want to be yours. Want you to bite me.” 

Peter comes then, with a garbled shout and Stiles shudders and comes. 

They lay like that, panting and sticky and sated, wrapped in each other, and Stiles whispers, “Never again.” 

Peter hums against his throat. 

“We’re never going to be apart like that again,” he vows and Peter blinks up at him. 

It’s a promise, and a plea and Peter kisses him. 

They aren’t alone. 

They’ll never be alone.  


	28. Gift

He sleeps against Peter's chest as the rain comes down and Wolf growls low. He doesn't like when Stiles isn't protected--isn't stupid enough to think Stiles  _ needs _ it but there are instincts that demand to be met and protecting Stiles will always be one of them.

The rain feels soothing, though, washing away the blood still on his Boy, washing away the sticky come on his skin. 

He smells fresh and clean and  _ claimed.  _

The moon is still rising. He meant to take longer with Gerard, meant to push this til the very last moment, when the moon was full and bright and the veils were the thinnest.

Fucking Stiles here wasn’t the plan. It was a nice way to pass the time, though, and he presses a kiss into Stiles hair as he watches the moon rise. 

He doesn’t want to wake his boy--doesn’t want Stiles to leave his arms after the weeks they’ve spent apart--but he knows what needs to be done, so he sighs and nudges him awake. 

“Sweetheart. It’s time.” 

 

~*~

 

He does it. Stiles offers, but this is his to do. 

He is a Hale, the last living Hale, and the nemeton gave him that. Gave him time to heal and live, beyond the touch of time, until his Boy found him in the preserve. 

The nemeton gave him that gift, and he can give it this. 

He tips the bucket slowly, and the blood seeps out, viscous and thick, and he thinks it’ll puddle there in the wet dirt--but it doesn’t. 

It seeps in, so deep and quick it’s almost like it never touches the ground. He circles the tree, pouring steadily the entire time, and he murmurs, the entire time. 

Quiet thanks. 

Whispered gratitude. 

Acknowledgment of their sacrifice. 

He pours and pours, until the last drop of blood has been spilt, and the ground has swallowed it up, and then he kneels down, next to Stiles, dirt and rocks digging into his knees. 

“Do you think it’s enough?” he murmurs. 

Peter doesn’t answer. 

He doesn’t  _ know _ . 

Christopher Argent and his pretty daughter are still alive. 

He doesn’t know if this gift of death and blood will be enough to tide the nemeton, and the unquiet dead--but he knows that Stiles will never allow him to touch Allison. 

In truth, he doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to hurt an innocent girl whose only crime was the family she was born to and loving Stiles. 

Doesn’t want to hurt Christopher, who reminds him so much of Aleksander and a life that was ended far too soon. 

“It has to be,” Peter murmurs, eventually. 

“This was a gift,” he says, voice louder, a touch of Wolf in it, “freely given, as yours once was. I hope it serves you as well as yours has served me.” 

The wind rustles through the leaves, and Stiles shivers, presses that little bit closer, and Peter wraps an arm around him. 

“We’re leaving,” he says, softly, and Stiles presses harder. “I--I’m sorry.” 

They don’t linger, after that--there is no reason to. 

 

~*~

 

The rain starts again, as they walk home, and Peter thinks the cool misting drizzle feels almost like a blessing and a farewell. 


	29. Double

There are many stories, in Beacon Hills.  Stories of monsters and men, of good fathers and lonely children and magic. 

They are lies, mostly. 

Stories told by people who should know better, who  _ did _ know better and chose a version of history that fit the world they were comfortable living in. 

The stories told are lies. 

This. This is the truth. 

 

~*~

 

They leave in the dark, with the rain falling. They leave a house burning and a life deserted. They leave with nothing but a trunk full of books and a handful of ash and a promise. 

It’s enough. 

They leave, and once, Stiles looks back. Once. Then he smiles at Peter, and settles into the passenger seat.

The lights of Beacon Hills fade and darkness and the wide winding road take them. 

 

~*~

 

The mayor and sheriff go missing, and a week later, Christopher Argent spills into the sheriff’s station, pale and shaking, clutching a bloody letter detailing the double murder of his father and sister. 

There are no suspects--most people murmur it was that Peter, that he killed them and stole Stiles away in the night, murmur about how the poor boy must be suffering with such a monster. 

They say it in sad, pitying tones, but there’s a touch of glee, of morbid fascination in it. 

Sometimes, they see Christopher, pale and rigid and furious and their whispers quiet, if only for a moment. Grief walks the streets of Beacon Hills and as titillating as the gossip and stories are--they have the barest bit of respect for that grief. 

 

~*~

 

Christopher doesn’t take the sheaf of papers--the ones that accompanied the bloody confession--to the sheriff’s station. 

He doesn’t show it to Allison, either. He locks himself away with it, and reads until his hands shake and his stomach churns, and he finally throws up, messy and bitter, into the bin next to his bed. 

This--this is a story that he only ever heard snatches of. A story spoken in whispers between cousins and uncles, murmured when he drifted half asleep on his grandmother’s lap, hinted at in his father’s iron grip and furious gaze. 

This then is the truth. 

The story of his family, bloody and filled with hate, the death of innocents and most of a race on their hands. 

He holds it in his hands and he sobs. 

 

~*~

 

“Do you think we’ll ever go back?” Stiles asks. 

He knows the answer. 

He knew it when he first asked Peter what he wanted to do to the Argents. 

He thinks he knew, that day in the Preserve when Wolf and Peter stepped into that tiny dirty den and carried him home--they would always leave. 

Beacon Hills wasn’t home. 

“If you want to,” Peter says. “But I don’t need to. Beacon Hills is just a town of stories and ghosts, sweetheart. We carry enough dead, between us.” 

He squeezes Stiles hand and smiles. “And we make our own stories.”


	30. Jolt

He wakes with a jolt.

The room is dark and still unfamiliar, but the scent _is_ and he buries his nose in the bedsheets, biting back a whine.

Boy shifts, rolls toward him in the bed, his voice sleepy. “Wolf?”

He huffs, and Boy presses his face to Wolf’s ruff, the warmth of his breath curling against his fur in a pleasant scenting. Wolf rumbles under it, some of the tension dissipating until he’s limp against the bed, and Boy is quiet and steady at his side. He drifts off to sleep like that, Boy wrapped around him and he hears, “I’m here, Peter. I’m here.”

 

~*~

 

Stiles knew what America did to werewolves. What the world did to packs.

But he’d never been beyond Beacon Hills.

Traveling with Peter--he sees it.

In signs on restaurant doors, and mountain ash lines worked into buildings. In the way they _never_ saw other ‘wolves, and the way they are chased from a tiny town in Montana, wolfsbane bullets chasing them.

America is not a safe place for werewolves, and Stiles sometimes watches Peter, worry and fear in his eyes.

Peter hates it.

Hates his boy is still afraid.

Hates that he can’t make this fear go away.

 

~*~

 

There are some places, whispered stories say, that are safe.

Some places that still welcome werewolves.

 

~*~

 

“Is it worth it?” Peter asks, one night.

Stiles looks at him from where he’s brushing his teeth, wearing Peter’s long vneck, pale and beautiful.

“Being with me. It’s not safe.”

Stiles finishes his teeth and then crawls in Peter’s lap, kisses him hard and fierce, hands possessive on his face.

“You are worth _anything_ , Peter. You are worth _everything.”_

 

~*~

 

Stiles fucks Peter that night.

It’s something they rarely do, and when they do, Peter usually controls it, even as he’s being filled and fucked.

But that night--Stiles pressed him back, and lavished him with slow, drugging kisses, a blow job so lazy Peter almost doesn’t realize he’s coming until Stiles is licking his cock clean and surging up to feed the taste back to him.

He fucks Peter slowly, fingers him open while pressing kisses to his mouth and whispered nonsense to his throat, and Peter closes his eyes against the emotion welling in him, when Stiles presses deep.

It feels like ownership.

Like Stiles is claiming him, and Peter _knows_ he’s not, but he wants that, wants his Boy always, and in moments like this, Peter thinks maybe Stiles wants that too.

 

~*~

 

Peter never asks, again, if he’s worth it.

 

~*~

 

They wander the country, cleaning out the Hale vaults and amassing wealth and knowledge, and Stiles realizes that he hates it.

Hates this world that doesn’t want Peter. Hates the way gazes follow them, whispers and speculation.

He wonders, sometimes, as they leave another tiny town behind, what people are saying about them.

He wonders if they’re still talked about in Beacon Hills.

 

~*~

 

It takes time, to find _home._ Peter doesn’t mind, though. Stiles sits in the passenger seat with his wide smile and steady gaze, bounces behind the steering wheel, singing and laughing at Peter, seethes at his side when they’re turned away again in another town that doesn’t matter.

Home is an idea, a place he can claim as his and build into something safe for Stiles.

And they’ll find that, he knows.

But for now--

Home is the pale boy, lonely and bright and cruel and _his._

 

~*~

 

They settle in Alaska.

It’s cold, and Stiles kind of hates that. But it’s isolated, and Wolf loves that.

Peter does, too.

And Stiles--Stiles loves Peter.

They settle in Alaska, and there is a nearby pack--a family of four born wolves, one bitten teenager. Peter runs with them, sometimes, but he likes being with Stiles on full moons, likes their small pack of two.

 

~*~

 

The village is almost two hours from their cabin, and sometimes, when they go to town for supplies, he can hear them murmuring.

He can hear the stories, being told.

He smiles.

Stores are told, always.

But this story is the most important: they are happy.

They are happy.


	31. Slice

They tell stories.

Peter tells them to Stiles, about his family, about werewolves. About history that he lived through, and the years lost in the preserve, lost in Wolf.

He tells stories because he has more stories than one lifetime should.

Stiles tell stories too.

Of his mother, kind and warm and cruel in the end, changed by a vicious disease.

Of his father, honorable and good and flawed, and in the end, stolen away too soon.

They tell stories to the pack children, of an ancient tree and a birthright that werewolves have forgotten. They tell stories of a family, strong and proud and cruel, and how not all of them were.

They tell stories.

But mostly, they tell the truth.

 

~*~

 

Once, years after they settle in Alaska, Stiles is in the village, laughing with the children and he hears a voice--familiar and strange in this place.

Scott stares at him across the dirty snow and sled dogs, and Stiles smiles at him.

He looks like something from another life.

Stiles waves, and makes his way slowly to Scott’s side.

 

~*~

 

There’s a moment, while Scott is drinking his beer, chewing on a slice of venison with a dubious expression, that Stiles wonders.

If Argent is with him.

If they are still hunting Peter.

If this means they’ll need to run.

And then Scott talks, tells him all the stories of Beacon Hills, of the place that was once _home_ , and he relaxes. Tells him about how things are good,  _better._ He shows Stiles pictures of his daughter and mentions a new werewolf pack has taken up residence in the preserve. 

He tells a story of growth and new beginnings and Stiles hopes, he  _hopes_ for the little town he once called home. 

 

~*~

 

“Will I see you again?” Scott asks, when Stiles walks out of the bar.

Stiles shrugs, and smiles. “Maybe. You never know, buddy.” He pauses and asks, "How did you find me?" 

Scott shrugs. Grins. "I followed the stories." 

Stiles breaths a laugh at that before he turns and walks to where Peter is waiting, and Stiles can feel Scott watching.

He wonders what stories he will carry away from this place. And then Peter’s hands are on him, warm and soothing and familiar, and Stiles decides he doesn’t care.

That isn’t his story anymore.

 

~*~

 

Peter touches it, that night. Presses his lips and teeth to the bite mark that scarred on Stiles shoulder and Stiles sighs softly, tips his head to the side and lets Wolf take what comfort he needs.

They are mates, have been since the summer they built the cabin--years ago now--and sometimes Peter still touches that bite mark, like he can’t believe it’s real.

Like he can’t believe they get to have this.

Stiles understands that stare, that kind of helpless awe--because he feels it too, so often when he’s with Peter.

 

~*~

 

The wind whistles around their cabin and Stiles presses close to Peter, and closes his eyes.

Stories will swirl. In the village and farther, travel all the way down to Beacon Hills.

But they don’t matter, and they aren’t the truth. They are only the stories that are told.

This.

This then, is the truth.

They are together, happy and in love. Stiles loves him.

Peter loves him. Wolf loves his Boy. It is enough.

A pale lonely boy sleeps next to the Beast of Beacon Hills, safe and happy and loved.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh! It's done!! I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. <3 <3 thanks so much for going on this little journey with me.


End file.
